Eleonora Duse Quotes

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive. ~ Eleonora Duse

There was something virile in her attitude toward tragedy, as though she were defying God to knock off the chip He Himself had placed on her shoulder. ~ Jack Kerouac

If I had my will I would live in a ship on the sea, and never come nearer to humanity than that! ~ Eleonora Duse

To help, to continually help and share, that is the sum of all knowledge; that is the meaning of art. ~ Eleonora Duse

The weaker partner in a marriage is the one who loves the most. ~ Eleonora Duse

First one works alone through the mind, then before the public through experience. ~ Eleanora Duse

Interpretation is the evidence of growth and knowledge, the latter through sorrow ? that great teacher. ~ Eleanora Duse

You are a very special child," the old handmaid said, stroking Eleonora's hair. "You know that don't you?"
Eleonora mumbled a yes.
"You know you are special, but I think that you aren't sure how."
She nodded. That was, indeed, the crux of it. ~ Michael David Lukas

Work means so many things! So many! Among other things, work also means freedom ... Without it even the miracle of love is only a cruel deception. ~ Eleanora Duse

Ibsen is like this room where we are sitting, with all the tables and chairs. Do I care whether you have twenty or twenty-five links on your chain? Hedda Gabler, Nora and the rest: it is not that I want! I want Rome and the Coliseum, the Acropolis, Athens; I want beauty, and the flame of life. ~ Eleanora Duse

If I were twenty or thirty years younger, I would start afresh in this field with the certainty of accomplishing much. But I should have to learn from the bottom up, forgetting the theatre entirely and concentrating on the special medium of this new art. My mistake, and that of many others, lay in employing "theatrical" techniques despite every effort to avoid them. Here is something quite, quite fresh, a penetrating form of visual poetry, an untried exponent of the human soul. Alas, I am too old for it! ~ Eleanora Duse

Anyone who presumes to teach art has no understanding of it. ~ Eleanora Duse

To save the Theatre, the Theatre must be destroyed, and actors and actresses all die of the Plague ... they make art impossible. ~ Eleanora Duse