Sarah Bernhardt - The art of the theatre

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

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

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

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

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
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