Helen Hayes Quotes

From your parents you learn love & laughter & how to put one foot in front of the other. But when books are opened, you discover you have wings.

Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition.

I genitori ti insegnano ad amare, ridere e correre. Ma solo entrando in contatto con i libri, si scopre di avere le ali.

Egocentrics are attracted to the inept. It gives them one more excuse for patting themselves on the back.

Stardom can be a gilded slavery.

The expert at anything was once a beginner.

The good die young — but not always. The wicked prevail — but not consistently. I am confused by life, and I feel safe within the confines of the theatre.

Age is not important unless you're a cheese.

Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up. That he has to leave the nest, the security, and go out to do battle. He has to lose everything that is lovely and fight for a new loveliness of his own making, and it's a tragedy. A lot of people don't have the courage to do it.

My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that 'achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others, and that's nice, too, but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about success.

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.

The old-fashioned idea that the simple piling up of experiences, one on top of another, can make you an artist, is, of course, so much rubbish. If acting were just a matter of experience, then any busy harlot could make Garbo’s Camille pale.

The faster we travel, the less there is to see.

You rest, you rust.

Only the poet can look beyond the detail and see the whole picture.