Sophia Loren Quotes

"At the dressing table, every woman has a chance to be an artist, and art, as Aristotle said, "completes what nature left unfinished.

Not at first. She was against new things. She thought I would never be successful, and that was wrong, she was wrong. Later she started to believe that I could maybe be somebody. But it was always a big maybe. To her, the life that I wanted, it was all a dream. And she didn’t believe in dreams.

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age.

Naples is so strong, so vital. It’s about music and dance. Books and books of history. Read all the books first and then we can talk.

"Good morning. "Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with the inner drive, go much farther than people with vastly superior talent

I was blessed with a sense of my own destiny. I have never sold myself short. I have never judged myself by other people’s standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself. So failure or reversal does not bring out resentment in me because I cannot blame others for any misfortune that befalls me.

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much further than people with vastly superior talent.

Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.

Success introduces you to the world. But failure introduces the world to you.

Emancipationen ville være mere troværdig, hvis den ikke så hyppigt blev repræsenteret af kvinder, der har kommet til kort i kærligheden.

Discipline is the great equalizer. If a young woman is beautiful but has no discipline, she will lose her looks as she grows older. If a plain woman is disciplined she will undoubtedly become more beautiful with time.

I've never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don't understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now.

I lived my life as best I could, hidden behind a thin yet sturdy veil of shyness. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but I was really shy, perhaps because of our situation: My father was absent, and my mother was too blond, too tall, too lively, and, above all, unmarried. Her eccentric, excessive beauty embarrassed me. She was a ragazza madre, a girl-mother, as the saying goes. I dreamed of a normal, reassuring mother, with black hair, a creased apron, her hands rough, and her eyes tired — like Mamma Luisa, whom I would find once again a few decades later in A Special Day, a movie in which I play a character named Antonietta, a devoted housewife and mother of six.

You must all, somewhere deep in your hearts, believe that you have a special beauty that is like no other and that is so valuable that you must not abandon it. Indeed, you must learn to cherish it.

As time passed there was no more buying food, no money, no supplies. On some days, we wouldn’t even have a crumb to eat. There’s a vivid scene in Nanni Loy’s The Four Days of Naples, a movie made after the war about the uprising of the Neapolitans against the occupying Germans, in which one of the young characters sinks his teeth into a loaf of bread so voraciously, so desperately, I can still identify with him. In those four famous days in late September, when Naples rose up against the Germans — even before the Allies arrived, it was the climax of a terrible period of deprivation and marked the beginning of the end of the war in Italy.