Lillian Hellman Short Quotes

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Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

Lillian Hellman
It doesn't pay well to fight for what we believe in.

Lillian Hellman
A man should be jailed for telling lies to the young.

Lillian Hellman
Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.

Lillian Hellman
You do too much. Go and do nothing for a while. Nothing.

Lillian Hellman
Some people are democrats by choice, and some by necessity.

Lillian Hellman
Success isn't everything but it makes a man stand straight.

Lillian Hellman
You don't always know how to do things when they're happening.

Lillian Hellman
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.

Lillian Hellman
Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.

Lillian Hellman
Anybody who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

Lillian Hellman
I think people always believe what they want to believe, don't you?

Lillian Hellman
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.

Lillian Hellman
The convictions of Hollywood and television are made of boiled money.

Lillian Hellman
Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?

Lillian Hellman
People always sound so proud when they announce they know nothing of music.

Lillian Hellman
Courtesy is breeding. Breeding is an excellent thing. Always remember that.

Lillian Hellman
For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.

Lillian Hellman
Maybe money is unreal for most of us, easier to give away than things we want.

Lillian Hellman
My mother was dead for five years before I knew that I had loved her very much.

Lillian Hellman
People change and forget to tell each other. Too bad –causes so many mistakes.

Lillian Hellman
We had been talking as old friends should talk, about nothing, about everything.

Lillian Hellman
A room of one's own isn't nearly enough. A house, or, best, an island of one's own.

Lillian Hellman
[France] may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant.

Lillian Hellman
A theme is always necessary, a plain, simple, unadorned theme to confuse the ignorant.

Lillian Hellman
Haven't you lived in the South long enough to know that nothing is ever anybody's fault?

Lillian Hellman
How often the rich like to play at being poor. A rather nasty game, I've always thought.

Lillian Hellman
Failure in the theater is more public, more brilliant, more unreal than in any other field.

Lillian Hellman
It is best in the theater to act with confidence no matter how little right you have to it.

Lillian Hellman
What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth.

Lillian Hellman