19th-century Actress Quotes

Sarah Bernhardt

Ethel Barrymore

Marie Dressler

Theda Bara

Billie Burke

Edith Evans

Ellen Terry

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.

Ethel Barrymore

I did not use paint. I made myself up morally.

When a woman behaves like a man, why doesn't she behave like a nice man?

I want Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D played at my funeral. If it isn't I shall jolly well want to know why.

Sybil Thorndike

It seems to me that the most fundamental mistake most parents make with children is to expect them to be grateful. Children are never grateful.... The 'sacrifices' you made were not for them, they were for you.

When the author Somerset Maugham told her he had to be leaving the dinner table early because he had to 'look after his youth':

Next time do bring him. We adore those sort of people.

Helen Maud Holt

She sat down in a weed patch, her elbows on her knees, and kept her eyes on the small sterious world of the ground. In the shade and sun of grass blade forests, small living things had their metropolis.

I had the endurance but not the brute strength that must be coupled with it. No woman has this combination. That's why I say none of my sex will ever accomplish that particular stunt.

Annette Kellerman

An idea is our visual reaction to something seen - in real life, in our memory, in our imagination, in our dreams.

Of Greta Garbo:

A rather boring old Swede, but luckily she loves doing the washing-up.

Another great illusion that woman must... destroy... is the impurity of sex, the realisation in defiance of superstition that there is nothing impure in sex - except in the mental attitude toward it...

Genius is the talent for seeing things straight. It is seeing things in a straight line without any bend or break or aberration of sight, seeing them as they are, without any warping of vision. Flawless mental sight! That is genius!

It is never right to be more Catholic than the Pope.

Helena Modjeska

There is a vital force in rumor. Though crushed to earth, to all intents and purposes buried, it can rise again without apparent effort.

Eleanor Robson Belmont

All mankind craves joy and dreads sorrow,
And as we each have just one life to live
Let us get the best that we can —
But pay for it with the best we can give.

There is always a half-malicious curiosity amongst actors to witness the shortcomings of a novice. They invariably experience strong inclinations to prophesy failure.

Anna Cora Mowatt

Years ago I decided that the greatest need in our Country was Art... We were a very young country and had very few opportunities of seeing beautiful things, works of art... So, I determined to make it my life's work if I could.

Isabella Stewart Gardner

There is no such thing as unfortunate genius; if a man or woman is fit for work, God appoints the field.

Adah Isaacs Menken

I felt weary of the responsibility of owning houses and was glad enough to pass mine on to others.

Of course he [Dante] was a genius, wasn't he – like Shakespeare? … He and Dante seem to have known everything … known what would always be true … Wonderful, I imagine that we're going to find that this is full of quotations.

He had great ideas upon the importance of a regular and almost daily visit to the dentist. He himself went to a dentist as he would have gone to a hairdresser's, and he insisted that all the little girls he knew should go too.

The reason good women like me and flock to my pictures is that there is a little bit of vampire instinct in every woman.

We cannot break a law of eternal justice, however ignorantly, but throughout the entire universe will there be a jar of discord that will so trouble the divine harmonies that in the rebound we shall find each man his own hell! The sooner we arrive at this knowledge, the sooner we take the certainty to our souls, the sooner do our lives begin to assume the square allotted to us.

Charlotte Cushman

They tell me there is no more toilet paper in the house. How can I be expected to act a romantic part and remember to order toilet paper!

Mrs Patrick Campbell

Before you can be eccentric you must know where the circle is.