French actress (1844-1923)
I refuse the title of artist to those who owe their reputations to a physical deformity. I regard them as buffoons.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Art of the Theatre
The theatre is the involuntary reflex of the ideas of the crowd.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Art of the Theatre
Me pray? Never! I'm an atheist.
SARAH BERNHARDT
attributed, What Great Men Think of Religion
My life has been a struggle -- a struggle to have my own way where I felt I was in the right.
SARAH BERNHARDT
"The first modern celebrity was born 175 years ago", Vox, June 26, 2019
The courtesy of the well-educated man vanishes before the footlights, and the comedian, who in private life would render a service to a woman in any difficulty, will pick a quarrel with her on the stage. He would risk his life to save her from any danger in the road, on the railway, or on a boat, but when once on the boards he will not do anything to help her out of a difficulty. If her memory should fail, or if she should make a false step, he would not hesitate to push her--I am going a long way, perhaps, but not so far as people may think.
SARAH BERNHARDT
Memories of My Life
Eleonora Duse is more a comedian than an artiste. She walks in paths that have been traced out by others. She does not imitate them, certainly not, for she plants flowers where there were trees and trees where there were flowers, but she has never by her art made a single personage stand out identified by her name; she has not created a being or a vision which reminds one of herself. She has put on other people's gloves, but she has put them on inside out. And all this she has done with infinite grace and with careless unconsciousness.
SARAH BERNHARDT
Memories of My Life
Politics and governments -- they are more than I can understand. Present systems are corrupted by personal ambition. It is all so complicated and insincere. Conditions are much worse now than they were during the war. In 1914 we went into the fight without argument. We finished it with very little, but now, strangely enough, comes all the wrangling, the restrictions, the selfishness.
SARAH BERNHARDT
"Bernhardt Triumphs in New Role", Theatre Magazine, 1920
Life is, alas, one eternal combat.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Idol of Paris
The actor is too prone to exaggerate his powers; he wants to play Hamlet when his appearance is more suitable to King Lear.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Art of the Theatre
The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Art of the Theatre
The dramatic art would appear to be rather a feminine art; it contains in itself all the artifices which belong to the province ofwoman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of woman.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Art of the Theatre
Permanent success cannot be achieved except by incessant intellectual labour, always inspired by the ideal.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Art of the Theatre
Can philosophy and religion evolve without danger in the same mind?
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Idol of Paris
Although all new ideas are born in France, they are not readily adopted there. It seems that they must first commence to prosper in a foreign country.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Art of the Theatre
In the theater it is better to have long arms, long rather than short: an actor with short arms can never make a fine gesture!
SARAH BERNHARDT
My Double Life
Had my child been a clergyman's probably he would have been strangled at birth.
SARAH BERNHARDT
response to a clergyman who denounced her for having a child out of wedlock, "The first modern celebrity was born 175 years ago", Vox, June 26, 2019
I am always studying character. Everyone I meet is a new study.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Strand Magazine, 1895
I adored my mother, but with a touching and fervent desire to leave her, never to see her again, to sacrifice her to God.
SARAH BERNHARDT
My Double Life
Actors of the first water are not more plentiful than playwrights of genius.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Art of the Theatre
My costume was a failure; it did not fit me. They had always jeered at me for my thinness and in this dress I looked like an English teapot.
SARAH BERNHARDT
Memories of My Life