Helen Hayes Quotes

The expert in anything was once a beginner.

If you rest, you rust.

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

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.

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

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

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

There is only one terminal dignity - love.

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

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.

Egocentrics are attracted to the inept. It gives them one more excuse for patting themselves on the back.

Childhood is a short season.

Age is not important unless you're a cheese.

All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.

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.

Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.

The expert at anything was once a beginner.

Stardom can be a gilded slavery.

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

At 50, you need to laugh about your age. If you don't, everybody else will do it for you. Happy birthday, old chum!

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

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.

Always aim for achievement, and forget about success.

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.

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.

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

We may be living in the twentieth century, in resplendent sophistication. But deep down, most of us find ourselves still in the Stone Age of superstition.

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

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.

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

When Charles first saw our child Mary, he said all the proper things for a new father. He looked upon the poor little red thing and blurted, "She's more beautiful than the Brooklyn Bridge."

When books are opened, we discover that we have wings

Perhaps we have been misguided into taking too much responsibility from our children, leaving them too little room for discovery

There is no racial or religious prejudice among people in the theater. The only prejudice is against bad actors, especially successful ones.

In the last stages of a final illness, we need only the absence of pain and the presence of family.

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

When it comes to staying tuned: if you rest, you rust.

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.

The faster we travel, the less there is to see.

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.

All my dogs have been scamps and thieves and troublemakers and I've adored them all.

My faith has wavered but has saved me.

Always aim for achievement and forget about success.

Yes I have doubted. I have wandered off the path but I always return. It is intuitive an intrinsic built-in sense of direction. I seem always to find my way home.

If you rest you rust.