Quotes from Helen Hayes

Childhood is a short season.

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.

I'm a boss by nature. I'm bossy. I'm not imperious, but I don't really want people to curtsy low before me and back out of rooms, but I do like to run things.

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

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.

The expert in anything was once a beginner.

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

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

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.

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

Always aim for achievement and forget about success.

The expert at anything was once a beginner.

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

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.

Love is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

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.

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

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

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.

We live in a very tense society. We are pulled apart... and we all need to learn how to pull ourselves together.... I think that at least part of the answer lies in solitude.

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

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

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.

Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.