Top 188 Quotes & Sayings by Bette Midler - Page 2

It's important that you all agree on what the parameters are and what you can accomplish - and not get pissed off or beat yourself up for what you can't accomplish.

The only thing Madonna will ever do like a virgin is give birth in a stable.

Total contentment is only for cows.

While I was growing up, I believed I could do anything I could think of. So the challenge was always to keep thinking - to get to where I wanted to be and then to think of somewhere else to go.

Honey, I can smell the scent of another woman from 500 paces.

I read a comment that made me think I should stop singing for a while. And I didn't want to stop singing, because it was the only thing I loved. At first I thought, "Maybe I'll get better and eventually please the person who wrote about my singing." But then I thought, "I probably will never please this person. I should just do what pleases me."

When it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil, you leave your ashes to be composted.

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance. It is the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance.

I come from an overly confident place. But I'm overconfident because of feelings of inferiority.

If somebody makes me laugh, I’m his slave for life.

If you're passionate about something, then you should pick up your flag and run with it.

My parents taught me: Do not rely on a man. Not rely on it that you get married and it pays for you. That's what I figured. I have always paid my own bills.

Just remember, during the winter, far beneath the bitter snow, that there's a seed that with the sun's love in the spring becomes a rose.

When you reach a certain age, you have fulfilled your childhood dream and whatever your first or second adulthood led you to do. Then you're in your third adulthood, the one that leads to the grave, and you ask yourself, "What will I do between now and then?" Instead of thinking in terms of glamour, you start thinking in terms of reform - your contribution to the world.

Sometimes you have to make your own opportunities, and that's why I'm on TV. I wasn't going to sit around anymore, waiting for the damn phone to ring. I had to create my own place - I've always done that.

Life is like cooking your masterpiece recipe. You have to get the right ingredients,have the right mixture and the right cooking time to reveal the PERFECT and DELICIOUS TASTE of your craft.

It's the Point of Your View that Decides What You See - / One Man's Flop Is Another Man's Hit. / From Manners to Movies, the Picture Keeps Changing / Depending Upon Where You Sit.

You have to think you're the greatest thing since sliced bread, but you have to know that you're not.

I think the essence of humor has not changed. It's all about surprise, facilitating follows. But the context of humor has changed. Previously, the jokes were more related to current issues, political. Today people make about each other either funny or about people like Kim Kardashian. It's brutal. Everything is so much vielschmutziger.

I'm looking for something that gives me a chance to stretch. Because I have my own work, and I can do anything I want in my own work - juggle, tap dance, anything I want.

Even if the whole human race dies off because we keep fighting and killing each other and being heartless, the planet will take care of itself. Eventually, after millions of years, it will cleanse itself, and new life forms, maybe better ones, will come. Meanwhile, we'll have gotten exactly what we deserved: annihilation.

In a marriage, you struggle and struggle and struggle, and then you realize that you have to ride the horse in the direction it's going. You stop trying to pull the reins in another direction.

My parents used to park us kids at the public library in downtown Honolulu every Saturday. They'd leave us there at 8 A.M. and pick us up at 4 P.M. - so between those hours, you'd better find something to do! I sat upstairs in the picture room and went through opera, ballet, and theater books. I loved the photographs of people wearing elaborate makeup and costumes - they really pulled at me inside. I was in that library every week for years, until I was about 13. I had a rich interior life, because I didn't have much of a social life.

The outside world doesn't have a lot to offer. You have to make your own heaven in your own home.

When I finally did stop and look at my life, I realized that I had done what I'd set out to do. In my pitiful little way, I had climbed the mountain I had chosen. And there I was, on top.

[On Denmark:] ... that little country of cottage cheese and courage.

Self-esteem is something you have to earn!

All these rumors about [Tom Cruise] being gay. I don't believe it. I don't believe it for one minute. He hasn't been to one of my shows.

I had no idea of being a star, all I knew was that I wanted to be a great actress, I wanted to work as an actress. So I thought the way I would be a great actress was to sing and dance first. Lay a foundation - get my foot in the door, and then undoubtedly, of course, I would be offered great roles as soon as I grew up enough to handle them.

Only two groups of people intimidate me absolutely: salespeople and the French.

I tried to charm the pants off Bob Dylan, but everyone will be disappointed to learn that I was unsuccessful. I got close - a couple of fast feels in the front seat of a Cadillac.

Romance is an illusion. Well, romance is not a complete illusion, but it's ephemeral. It does not last.

I believe that Judy Garland's artistry was so fine. I mean, when people say: 'oh, she brought so much of her life to her music', I don't really believe that. I believe that she didn't have to. She just was a moving human being. That was her gift.

[On Princess Anne:] Such an active, outdoorsy lass. She loves nature in spite of what it did to her.

Without passion, the powers-that-be can run roughshod over you.

I've forbidden my daughter to have grandchildren, I'm too young.

GOD is watching us, from a Distance.

You can feel compassion for others without feeling victimized yourself.

before one actually visits them, everyone tends to think of their favorite countries as one grand Disneyland filled with national monuments and historical treasures conveniently laid out for easy viewing, when what they really are filled with, of course, is people going to work, laundromats and places to buy rat poison.

I would much rather watch myself than listen to myself. The moving is second nature, but the listening... that's the art.

I can get plenty of men, keeping them is the hard part.

I don't like violence. I get sick from violence. Do you think people are excited by violence?

Thank God for the gays. I don't know what would have happened but I know what did happen. Good for them and good for me.

I wish America would spend even half as much time complaining about plastics in our oceans as we do about actresses' plastic surgery.

Humor disarms people. They don't feel threatened.

Twenty-seven people sang 'Wind Beneath My Wings' before I got around to it. A lot of people saw the movie that I sang it in, Beaches, and what they came away with was that song. They turned to their loved ones and said, 'You know, you are the wind beneath my wings!' The song expressed how they felt in a way a simple 'I love you' would not have.

One of my first role models was Eugene Lang, a wealthy businessman who went back to his elementary school in East Harlem and addressed the sixth-grade class. He looked out at that sea of faces and said, "If any of you wants to go to college, I will pay for it." When I read that, I burst into tears. It was so generous and so basic. Not fluffy. I can't understand why we scrimp on education and shortchange our kids. Why would the citizenry do that to the people who are going to inherit its republic?

America is so caught up in this celebrity mania!

There comes a time whenyou haveto let yourclothesgo out in the world and try to make it on their own.

I was brought up on rock-'n'-roll. It was sort of funny because I couldn't get interested in anything else - I tried and tried but I couldn't get into science...or mathematics, I just cut myself off from anything else there was to get interested in.

I want to have fun, and I want to give people a good laugh.

Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are doing pretty well at getting noticed - a lot of people are doing pretty well at it. But you wonder whether they'll last, because many of them don't have the ability to get an audience to love them. You say, "That's a fabulous body" or "I like that song"; you don't say, "I love them because I know them." You can't know them.

When my daughter was younger we showed her all the great musicals. And the great dramas and great comedies, and the one that she took to the most was Some Like It Hot.

If someone were to say seriously, "I'm divine," she'd have to be locked up. There are lots of people in mental institutions going around saying "I'm God." But because I'm funny about it, they haven't locked me up yet. And I don't give myself airs, either.

Melbourne is the kind of town that really makes you consider the question 'Is there life after death?

The first time I saw a picture of [fabled actress] Ethel Barrymore - she was on Broadway and she was wearing pearls. I thought, "That's who I should grow up to be." It's odd, because it was her physical image that I wanted; I had no idea what it was like actually to be her. In those days, we weren't bombarded by images the way we are now, and the ones we did have were more vivid in people's minds.

I'm confident that I'm as intelligent as many people, but I know that I'm not as intelligent as some. So in the presence of hyperintelligent people, I'm a shrinking violet because I don't want to look like a fool. I know a little about a lot and a lot about a little.

You have to be alert. When my daughter, Sophie, came out of the womb, she was instantly alert, as if she had been here before. And she was a little disappointed that she was here again.

I don't need anyone to write me a show in my style, I would like to do a show in a style that wasn't my style, because that's the only way I can grow up and grow out.

I have a ball - and it keeps my heart rate up. I get to wear fabulous clothes. I get to make people laugh. That's my core business, and that's where I'll always return.