Sarah Bernhardt Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

The actor is too prone to exaggerate his powers; he wants to play Hamlet when his appearance is more suitable to King Lear.

Sarah Bernhardt
He who is incapable of feeling strong passions, of being shaken by anger, of living in every sense of the word, will never be a good actor.

Sarah Bernhardt
Permanent success cannot be achieved except by incessant intellectual labour, always inspired by the ideal.

Sarah Bernhardt
The dramatic art would appear to be rather a feminine art; it contains in itself all the artifices which belong to the province ofwoman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of woman.

Sarah Bernhardt
I refuse the title of artist to those who owe their reputations to a physical deformity. I regard them as buffoons.

Sarah Bernhardt
Actors of the first water are not more plentiful than playwrights of genius.

Sarah Bernhardt
A defective voice will always preclude an artist from achieving the complete development of his art, however intelligent he may be.... The voice is an instrument which the artist must learn to use with suppleness and sureness, as if it were a limb.

Sarah Bernhardt
The artist's personality must be left in his dressing-room; his soul must be denuded of its own sensations and clothed with the base or noble qualities he is called upon to exhibit.... [he] must leave behind him the cares and vexations of life, throw aside his personality for several hours, and move in the dream of another life, forgetting everything.

Sarah Bernhardt
One should hate very little, because it's extremely fatiguing. One should despise much, forgive often and never forget. Pardon does not bring with it forgetfulness; at least not for me.

Sarah Bernhardt
Victor Hugo could not promise without keeping his word. He was not like me: I promise everything with the firm intention of keeping my promises, and two hours after I have forgotten all about them. If any one reminds me of what I have promised, I tear my hair, and to make up for my forgetfulness I say anything, I buy presents — in fact, I complicate my life with useless worries. It has always been thus, and always will be so.

Sarah Bernhardt
You must have this charm to reach the pinnacle. It is made of everything and of nothing, the striving will, the look, the walk, the proportions of the body, the sound of the voice, the ease of the gestures. It is not at all necessary to be handsome or to be pretty; all that is needful is charm.

Sarah Bernhardt
My fame had become annoying for my enemies, and a little trying, I confess, for my friends. But at that time all this stir and noise amused me vastly. I did nothing to attract attention. My somewhat fantastic tastes, my paleness and thinness, my peculiar way of dressing, my scorn of fashion, my general freedom in all respects, made me a being quite apart from all others. I did not recognise the fact.
I did not read, I never read, the newspapers. So I did not know what was said about me, either favourable or unfavourable. Surrounded by a court of adorers of both sexes, I lived in a sunny dream.

Sarah Bernhardt
What would life be without art? Science prolongs life. To consist of what-eating, drinking, and sleeping? What is the good of living longer if it is only a matter of satisfying the requirements that sustain life? All this is nothing without the charm of art.

Sarah Bernhardt
Life is short, even for those who live a long time, and we must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd, lively or sad, loyal or corrupt, from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions, either pleasant or unpleasant, which leave no trace behind them. We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget.

Sarah Bernhardt
I cannot walk a single step or make any movement or gesture, sit down, go out, look at the sky or ground, without feeling some reason for hope or despair, until at last, exasperated by the trammels put upon my actions by my thought, I defy all superstitions and just act as I want to act.

Sarah Bernhardt
Although all new ideas are born in France, they are not readily adopted there. It seems that they must first commence to prosper in a foreign country.

Sarah Bernhardt
The theatre is the involuntary reflex of the ideas of the crowd.

Sarah Bernhardt
The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions.

Sarah Bernhardt
Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

Sarah Bernhardt
Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrity when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves. They are at the beginning of a series of small worries, thunderbolts hidden under flowers, but they know how to hold in check that monster advertisement. It is a sort of octopus with innumerable tentacles. It throws out to right and left, in front and behind, its clammy arms, and gathers in, through its thousand little suckers, all the gossip and slander and praise afloat, to spit out again at the public when it is vomiting its black gall. But those who are caught in the clutches of celebrity at the age of twenty two know nothing.

Sarah Bernhardt
Those who taste the joys and sorrows of fame when they have passed forty know how to look after themselves. They know what is concealed beneath the flowers, and what the gossip, the calumnies, and the praise are worth. But as for those who win fame when they are twenty, they know nothing and are caught up in the whirlpool.

Sarah Bernhardt
I have, thanks to my travels, added to my stock all the superstitions of other countries. I know them all now, and in any critical moment of my life, they all rise up in armed legions for or against me.

Sarah Bernhardt