Quotations and phrases

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

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

Age is not important unless you're a cheese.
-- Helen Hayes

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.
-- Helen Hayes

Childhood is a short season.
-- Helen Hayes

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.
-- Helen Hayes

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.
-- Helen Hayes

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.
-- Helen Hayes

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

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.
-- Helen Hayes

If you rest, you rust.
-- Helen Hayes

Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.
-- Helen Hayes

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

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.
-- Helen Hayes

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

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

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

Stardom can be a gilded slavery.
-- Helen Hayes

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.
-- Helen Hayes

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

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.
-- Helen Hayes

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.
-- Helen Hayes

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

There is only one terminal dignity - love.
-- Helen Hayes

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.
-- Helen Hayes

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

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

All quotations and phrases said by Helen Hayes including famous quotes