19th-century Actor Quotes

Charlie Chaplin

Marcel Duchamp

John Barrymore

Bela Lugosi

Buffalo Bill

Will Rogers

Adolphe Menjou

Where words leave off, gesture begins. Don't we speak of a person being speechless with rage, dancing with impatience, setting his teeth? The final motions of the soul are speechless, animal, grotesque, or of an incomparable beauty.

Charlie Chaplin

God felt sorry for actors, so he gave them a place in the sun and a lot of money. All they had to sacrifice was their talent.

Armed warfare must be preceded by a struggle against the inclinations to compromise which are embedded among the majority of British workmen, against the ideas of evolution and peaceful extermination of capitalism. Only then will it be possible to count upon complete success of an armed insurrection.

Grigori Zinoviev

I'm Charley's aunt from Brazil—where the nuts come from.

During the war:

I'm off to see if X Mansions is really razed to the ground, as I have an uncle who lives there and I know I'm in his will!

Ernest Thesiger

If I wanted to go crazy, I would do it in Washington because it would not be noticed.

The only place you can wake up in the morning and hear the birds coughing in the trees.

Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Joseph N. Welch

A golf course is nothing but a pool room moved outdoors.

Barry Fitzgerald

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas, I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remembered for a very long time.

William McGonagall

A comedian is not a man who opens a funny door. He opens a door funny.

Time has not grown so very old since the most prominent members of our profession, though admired by the public eye, and lauded by its tongue, were socially, viewed askance, and regarded as "merely players."

Keep right on to the end of the road,
Keep right on to the end.
Tho' the way be long, let your heart be strong,
Keep right on round the bend.

Advertising is the best insurance that you can take out on your business. You can buy fire insurance on your stock of goods, but no company will issue a policy covering your business, the good will as they sometimes call it. You must insure yourself, and the best way to do it is by advertising. Good advertising kept up for a number of years gives you something that no fire can take away.

Frank Farrington

Papa told her about a Lohengrin performance. It was just before his first entrance. He was ready to step into the boat, which, drawn by a swan, was to take him on-stage. Somehow the stagehand on the other side got his signals mixed, started pulling, and the swan left without Papa. He quietly turned around and said: "What time's the next swan?"
That story has since become a classic in operatic lore.

My mind is just as open as it ever was, professor. But it's a scientific mind, and there's no place in it for superstitions.

The plural of goose is geese, But the plural of moose ain't meese, And the plural of noose ain't neese, But the plural of goose — is geese.

As usual the leading man is grumbling about the disadvantage he says he will be at not understanding English. He forgets that I am at a greater disadvantage, his language is understood by the entire audience while I am but partially so. However this is easily got over.

Superstition? Who can define the boundary line between the superstition of yesterday and the scientific fact of tomorrow?

Edward Van Sloan

Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.

I'm promised for this world just so long, and when I go that will be the end of it.... Sometime, I suppose, I'll make a mistake, a fatal mistake. and it will be all over.

Reply when asked if he was afraid of getting killed

I always wait for The Times each morning. I look at the obituary column, and if I'm not in it, I go to work.

An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,
Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gayly, that came at my call,
Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.

John Howard Payne

The Bow'ry, The Bow'ry. They say such things, and they do strange things on the Bow'ry.

I'm not at all sure that the concept of the readymade isn't the most important single idea to come out of my work.