Ethel Barrymore Quotations

The best time to make friends is before you need them.

You grow up the day you have the first real laugh at yourself.

You must learn day by day, year by year to broaden your horizon. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about, the more you have left when anything happens.

When life knocks you to your knees, and it will, why, get up! If it knocks you to your knees again, as it will, well, isn't that the best position from which to pray?

The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.

For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of a Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a MaCaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.

Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping.

The great actors are the luminous ones. They are the great conductors of the stage.

That's all there is; there isn't any more.

I never let them cough. They wouldn't dare.

Fundamentally I feel that there is as much difference between the stage and the films as between a piano and a violin. Normally you can't become a virtuoso in both.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure - if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

Ring of Fire, The Johnny Cash Musical Show

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh - at yourself.

For an actress to be a success she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros

Is everybody happy? I want everybody to be happy. I know I'm happy.

[At age 76:] A good life is like a good play -- it has to have a satisfying and exciting third act.

[On Hollywood:] It looks, it feels, as though it had been invented by a Sixth Avenue peepshow man.

You must learn, day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizon.