Sarah Bernhardt Quotes

Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrities when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves.

Mamma used to stay at home with her sweet friend, Madame Guerard. She used to read novels whilst Madame Guerard embroidered. They would sit there together without speaking, each dreaming her own dream, seeing it fade away, and beginning it over again.

[When asked at age 79 why her Paris apartment was located up many flights of stairs at the top of the building:] It's the only way I can still make the hearts of men beat faster.

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.

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.

All the pictures that hung in my memory before I knew you have faded and given place to our radient moments together. Now I cannot live apart from you... Your words are my food, your breath is my wine. You are everything to me.

Once the curtain is raised, the actor is ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third.

Art is not about something, Art is something

For the theatre one needs long arms ... an artiste with short arms can never make a fine gesture.

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

Me pray? Never! I'm an atheist.

If I have a foreign accent - which I much regret - it is cosmopolitan, but not Teutonic. I am a daughter of the great Jewish race, and my somewhat uncultivated language is the outcome of our enforced wanderings.

To be a good actor ... it is necessary to have a firmly tempered soul, to be surprised at nothing, to resume each minute the laborious task that has barely just been finished.

I have often been asked why I am so fond of playing male parts. As a matter of fact, it is not male parts, but male brains that I prefer.

Energy creates energy. It is by spending myself that I become rich.

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.

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.

We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget.

Alas, we are the victims of advertisement. 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.

What matters poverty? What matters anything to him who is enamoured of our art? Does he not carry in himself every joy and every beauty?

Each action of the actor on the stage should be the visible concomitant of his thoughts.

Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me.

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.

Legend remains victorious in spite of history.