Tone quotes
260 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside tone — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"“The three of you are enough to drive a mara mad. 'She can wear my shirt,’" she growled in imitation of Nash."No, she can wear my shirt," she said switching to Tod's smoother tone.Then Sabine took off down the hall without a glance at any of us."I have a spare. Come on, Kaylee, before I choke on testosterone and melodrama.”"
"The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage."
"When using colors to recreate a general harmony of tones in nature, one loses it by painfully exact imitation. One keeps it by recreating in an equivalent color range, and that may not be exactly, or far from exactly, like the model."
"I like to wear a lot of one-tone color outfits - same color trousers, same color shirt."
"There is a magic thing called 'tone' in a film, that the director must master and maintain."
"Sometimes I think we're exposed to things we shouldn't be exposed to too early. I think that sets the tone to a person's whole life."
"The notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at."
"Something sinister in the tone Told me my secret must be known: Word I was in the house alone Somehow must have gotten abroad, Word I was in my life alone, Word I had no one left but God."
"I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life."
"I used to get made fun of for being either too provocative or too eccentric, so I started to tone it down. I didn't fit in, and I felt like a freak."
"I don't mean to be rude—" he began, in a tone that threatened rudeness in every syllable. "Yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often," Dumbledore finished the sentence gravely."
"I would rather die than betray his trust." "That's not saying much, seeing as you're already dead," Ron observed. "Once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe," said Nearly Headless Nick in affronted tones."
"Always the tone of surpise."
"The highest tone is hard to hear."
"We only really know what is new, what suddenly introduces to our sensibility a change of tone which strikes us, that for which habit has not yet substituted its pale fac-similes."
"If the oarsmen of a fast-moving ship suddenly cease to row, the suspension of the driving force of the oars doesn't prevent the vessel from continuing to move on its course. And with a speech it is much the same. After he has finished reciting the document, the speaker will still be able to maintain the same tone without a break, borrowing its momentum and impulse from the passage he has just read out."
"Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains."
"We often contradict an opinion for no other reason than that we do not like the tone in which it is expressed."
"The one thing I like about 'Playboy' is they don't have the anorexic look. The women are voluptuous. So I didn't really want to diet. I just wanted to tone up."
"I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music."
