Top 17 Quotes & Sayings by Ethel Barrymore

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actress Ethel Barrymore.
Last updated on December 18, 2024.
Ethel Barrymore

Ethel Barrymore was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors. Barrymore was a stage, screen and radio actress whose career spanned six decades, and was regarded as "The First Lady of the American Theatre". She received four nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, winning for None but the Lonely Heart (1944).

You grow up the day you have the first real laugh at yourself.
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?
That's all there is; there isn't any more. — © Ethel Barrymore
That's all there is; there isn't any more.
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.
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 great actors are the luminous ones. They are the great conductors of the stage.
The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.
The best time to make friends is before you need them.
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.
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.
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.
I never let them cough. They wouldn't dare.
Is everybody happy? I want everybody to be happy. I know I'm happy.
You must learn, day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizon.
[on Hollywood] It looks, it feels, as though it had been invented by a Sixth Avenue peepshow man.
The best time to make friends is before you need them.
[At age 76:] A good life is like a good play -- it has to have a satisfying and exciting third act. — © Ethel Barrymore
[At age 76:] A good life is like a good play -- it has to have a satisfying and exciting third act.
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