Helen Hayes Quotes (30 Quotes)


    Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.

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

    Everybody starts at the top, and then has the problem of staying there. Lasting accomplishment, however, is still achieved through a long, slow climb and self-discipline.

    Life would give her everything of consequence, life would shape her, not we. All we were good for was to make the introductions.

    Science has taught us to lengthen life. Now we must learn to make a longer life worth living. Older people deserve choices that let us live out our days as we wish. We've seen people making such choices all over America, and we realize what we might have known from the start For most of us, there really is no place like home.


    There is only one terminal dignity - love.

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

    When Charles first saw our child Mary, he said all the proper things for a new father. He looked upon the poor little red thing and blurted, She's more beautiful than the Brooklyn Bridge.

    The truth is that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

    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.

    When traveling with someone, take large does of patience and tolerance with your morning coffee.

    We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.

    It's a wonderful thing you are doing in Akron. Keeping this great theater alive for the performing arts and for your children.

    I'm leaving the screen because I don't think I am very good in the pictures and I have this beautiful dream that I'm elegant on the stage.

    People who refuse to rest honorably on their laurels when they reach retirement age seem very admirable to me.

    Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness.

    There's a little vanity chair that Charlie gave me the first Christmas we knew each other. I'll not be parting with that, nor our bed - the four-poster - I'll be needing that to die in.

    Mere longevity is a good thing for those who watch Life from the side lines. For those who play the game, an hour may be a year, a single day's work an achievement for eternity.


    I cry out for order and find it only in art.


    We rely upon the poets, the philosophers and the playwrights to articulate what most of us can only feel, in joy or sorrow. They illuminate the thoughts for which we only grope. They give us the strength and balm we cannot find in ourselves. Whenever I find my courage wavering I rush to them. They give me the wisdom of acceptance, the will and resilience to push on.

    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... a lot of people don't have the courage to do it.

    Actors work and slave and it is the color of your hair that can determine your fate in the end.


    Age is not important unless you're a cheese.

    The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.

    An actress always knows when she's hit it and mostly you haven't but once or twice I think I hit it right, so maybe that's good enough for one life.

    One has to grow up with good talk in order to form the habit of it.

    From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings.


    More Helen Hayes Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Life - Love - Eternity - Poets - People - Literature - Performance Arts - Movies - Success - Home - Self-discipline - Fathers - Coffee - Books - Mind - Age - Tragedy - Hope - Sin - View All Helen Hayes Quotations

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