Top 26 Quotes & Sayings by Margot Fonteyn

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English dancer Margot Fonteyn.

Last updated on September 18, 2024.

Dame Margaret Evelyn de Arias DBE, known by the stage name Margot Fonteyn, was an English ballerina. She spent her entire career as a dancer with the Royal Ballet, eventually being appointed prima ballerina assoluta of the company by Queen Elizabeth II. Beginning ballet lessons at the age of four, she studied in England and China, where her father was transferred for his work. Her training in Shanghai was with Russian expatriate dancer Georgy Goncharov, contributing to her continuing interest in Russian ballet. Returning to London at the age of 14, she was invited to join the Vic-Wells Ballet School by Ninette de Valois. She succeeded Alicia Markova as prima ballerina of the company in 1935. The Vic-Wells choreographer, Sir Frederick Ashton, wrote numerous parts for Fonteyn and her partner, Robert Helpmann, with whom she danced from the 1930s to the 1940s.

English - Dancer | May 18, 1919 - February 21, 1991

Source: Wikipedia

Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

Margot Fonteyn

Take your work seriously, but never yourself.

Margot Fonteyn

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

Margot Fonteyn

Life forms illogical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?

Margot Fonteyn

Minor things can become moments of great revelation when encountered for the first time.

Margot Fonteyn

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

Margot Fonteyn

Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.

Margot Fonteyn

I have never wanted to live to be old, so old I'd run out of friends or money.

Margot Fonteyn

Jumping for joy' is a very basic human reaction, and a child skipping down the street is simply an untrained dancer.

Margot Fonteyn

Genius is another word for magic.

Margot Fonteyn

The world of dance is a charmed place. Some people like to inhabit it, others to behold it; either way it is rewarding.

Margot Fonteyn

I explained it when I danced it.

Margot Fonteyn

The world of dance is a natural world from which civilization has divorced many of us by making it appear remote - something reserved for the few who have a special talent.

Margot Fonteyn

Ballet is more than a profession - it is a way of life.

Margot Fonteyn

The essential thing about mothers is that one needs to know that they are there, particularly at that age when, paradoxically, one is trying so hard to break away from parental influence.

Margot Fonteyn

Traveling carries with it the curse of being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, for wherever one is some part of oneself remains on another continent.

Margot Fonteyn

There is no way anything of value can be done without some framework. It might well be that the framework is discarded or the rules opposed; that is not important. What is essential is that they exist so that one knows when one is in opposition to them.

Margot Fonteyn

I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

Margot Fonteyn

Life offstage has sometimes been a wilderness of unpredictables in an unchoreographed world.

Margot Fonteyn

generally speaking, we are all happier when we are still striving for achievement than when the prize is in our hands.

Margot Fonteyn