Top 46 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Burton

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Welsh actor Richard Burton.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Richard Burton was a Welsh actor. Noted for his mellifluous baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s, and he gave a memorable performance of Hamlet in 1964. He was called "the natural successor to Olivier" by critic Kenneth Tynan. A heavy drinker, Burton's perceived failure to live up to those expectations disappointed some critics and colleagues and added to his image as a great performer who had wasted his talent. Nevertheless, he is widely regarded as one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation.

Welsh - Actor | November 10, 1925 - August 5, 1984

Source: Wikipedia

An actor is something less than a man, while an actress is something more than a woman.

Richard Burton

You've got to swank in Hollywood.

Richard Burton

My sister Edith died at the age of 43. She was the youngest sister and the funniest. I had to harrumph and snort a few times to stop the weeping.

Richard Burton

The only nice poets I've ever met were bad poets, and a bad poet is not a poet at all - ergo, I've never met a nice poet.

Richard Burton

I didn't speak English until I was ten, when Philip Burton, the schoolmaster who became my guardian, took me under his wing.

Richard Burton

Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to un-know.

Richard Burton

False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports.

Richard Burton

I always speak Welsh to my family.

Richard Burton

Anyone can play Henry VIII. I mean, even Robert Shaw... has played it.

Richard Burton

Little islands are all large prisons: one cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.

Richard Burton

I've done the most awful rubbish in order to have somewhere to go in the morning.

Richard Burton

Warren Beatty seems very self-conscious and actory.

Richard Burton

'The Robe' was lousy but an almighty hit. I was dull as ditchwater and an almighty flop.

Richard Burton

I abhor mere prettiness.

Richard Burton

What an extraordinary world it is.

Richard Burton

If you're going to make rubbish, be the best rubbish in it.

Richard Burton

I've made more millions than I can count. But you know, it's a faerie gold - the tax people take most of it, and the rest goes to people you need to stay alive, places to live, conveyances to get from here to there.

Richard Burton

When I played drunks I had to remain sober because I didn't know how to play them when I was drunk.

Richard Burton

I don't have tremendous physical vitality since I had a neck operation, and I'm more aware than I used to be of the tedium of acting.

Richard Burton

I'm so weak at saying no.

Richard Burton

My next film, 'The Prince Of Players,' was Hollywood's first turkey in CinemaScope - when CinemaScope was new and hotter than a pistol.

Richard Burton

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

Richard Burton

How strange are the tricks of memory, which, often hazy as a dream about the most important events of a man's life, religiously preserve the merest trifles.

Richard Burton

How do you live with one person for 13 years and another for eight and find both as alien as strangers?

Richard Burton

I hate myself and my face in particular.

Richard Burton

I am writing to please myself, though there is a feeling in some place in my head that this may be publishable. I haven't been writing for nothing.

Richard Burton

A man that hoards up riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles.

Richard Burton

This diamond has so many carats it's almost a turnip.

Richard Burton

You reach the top of the heap, but it's a circle, and you slip on the down side, maybe for years. You get scared.

Richard Burton

They lard their lean books with the fat of others work.

Richard Burton

All the bad things that have ever happened to me have always happened in Rome.

Richard Burton

Every word I write I suspect the next day.

Richard Burton

Let's have days and days of brilliant clarity, etched and limpid, cool and surgical.

Richard Burton

I've got the weight of a rather tempestuous life to carry.

Richard Burton

If I had a chance for another life, I would certainly choose a better complexion.

Richard Burton

You may be as vicious about me as you please. You will only do me justice.

Richard Burton

Sometimes I am so much my father's son that I give myself occasional creeps.

Richard Burton

The Welsh are all actors. It's only the bad ones who become professional.

Richard Burton

How terrible a thing time is.

Richard Burton

I might run from her for a thousand years and she is still my baby child. Our love is so furious that we burn each other out.

Richard Burton

It is impossible to tell you what is consisted in the act of love.

Richard Burton

I am as dispassionate as it is possible for a human being to be and not be a machine.

Richard Burton

How drab people are, especially from the press.

Richard Burton

I grew up among heroes who went down the pit, who played rugby, told stories, sang songs of war.

Richard Burton

One of the gladdest moments of human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the cloak of many cares and the slavery of home, man feels once more happy.

Richard Burton

I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink.

Richard Burton

Top 46 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Burton

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