Sarah Bernhardt quotes

Life begets life. Energy creates energy.It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

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• wealth

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

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• achieved

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

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• actor

I adore Chicago. It is the pulse of America.

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• adore

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

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• theater

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.

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• adopted

For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.

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• theater

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.

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• asked

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?

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• anything

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...from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions.

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• commitment

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.

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• actor

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

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• love

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.

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• superstition

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 my wine. You are everything to me.

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• love

The monster of advertisement...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...

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• gossip

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.

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• actors