"The thing about performance, even if it’s only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities."

"Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we're acting. Most people do it all day long."

"For an actress to be a success she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros."

"It's not whether you really cry. It's whether the audience thinks you are crying."

"I sometimes don’t enjoy it at all, and sometimes it feels like... breath."

"For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture."

"Good actors never use the script unless it's amazing writing. All the good actors I've worked with, they all say whatever they want to say."

"An actor's a guy, who if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening."

"Through studying and through being raised on movie sets, I was surrounded by a lot of people who believed that the more tortured the person, the greater the artist. I always had a hard time understanding that, but thought, "I guess that's the way it is." Luckily, through life and the gift of the acting teacher who's changed my life in so many ways since 1984--her name is Sandra Seacat--I learned there's another opinion, which is: the better the person, the better the artist. The more true you are to who you are and the more honest you are as an individual, the more honest you can be as an actor, and I'm really liking that."

"I wanted to stop acting. The director was like, 'It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica. Don't do that thing with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in.' And I'm like, But there's no connection to a human being. And then it got me thinking: Am I not good enough? Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough? Do people hate them so much that they don't want me to be a person? Am I not allowed to be a person in my work? And so I just said, 'F--k it. I don't care about this business anymore.'"

"I think that being an actor is a really good job. Of course, there are things you have to put up with. In order to create a real character from text on a page, you have to be extremely sensitive about various things, so it can impact one’s daily life."

"It's very hard! Oh, Dick, my boy, It's very hard one can't enjoy A little private spouting; But sure as Lear or Hamlet lives, Up comes our master, Bounce! and gives The tragic Muse a routing."

"The question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it."

"There was a man bespake a thing, Which when the owner home did bring, He that made it did refuse it: And he that brought it would not use it, And he that hath it doth not know Whether he hath it yea or no."

"Why is the hearse with scutcheons blazon'd round, And with the nodding plume of ostrich crown'd? No; the dead know it not, nor profit gain; It only serves to prove the living vain."

"Ye undertakers, tell us, 'Midst all the gorgeous figures you exhibit, Why is the principal conceal'd, for which You make this mighty stir?"

"Diaulus, lately a doctor, is now an undertaker; what he does as an undertaker, he used to do also as a doctor."

"There's a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot; To the churchyard a pauper is going I wot; The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs, And hark to the dirge that the sad driver sings— Rattle his bones over the stones, He's only a pauper whom nobody owns."

"The houses that he makes last till doomsday."

"Get me some French tailor To new-create you."

"King Stephen was a worthy peere, His breeches cost him but a crowne; He held them sixpence all too deere, Therefore he call'd the taylor lowne."

"Il faut neuf tailleurs pour faire un homme."

"'Tis not the robe or garment I affect; For who would marry with a suit of clothes?"

"Yes, if they would thank their maker, And seek no further; but they have new creators, God tailor and god mercer."

"One commending a Tayler for his dexteritie in his profession, another standing by ratified his opinion, saying tailors had their business at their fingers' ends."

"What a fine man Hath your tailor made you!"

"As if thou e'er wert angry But with thy tailor! and yet that poor shred Can bring more to the making up of a man, Than can be hoped from thee; thou art his creature; And did he not, each morning, new create thee, Thou'dst stink and be forgotten."

"A tailor, though a man of upright dealing,— True but for lying,—honest but for stealing,— Did fall one day extremely sick by chance And on the sudden was in wondrous trance."

"Th' embroider'd suit at least he deem'd his prey; That suit an unpaid tailor snatch'd away."

"Thou villain base, Know'st me not by my clothes? No, nor thy tailor, rascal, Who is thy grandfather: he made those clothes, Which, as it seems, make thee."

"Sister, look ye, How, by a new creation of my tailor's I've shook off old mortality."

"Thou art a strange fellow: a tailor make a man? Ay, a tailor, sir; a stone-cutter or a painter could not have made him so ill, though he had been but two hours at the trade."

"May Moorland weavers boast Pindaric skill, And tailors' lays be longer than their bill! While punctual beaux reward the grateful notes, And pay for poems—when they pay for coats."

"Thy clothes are all the soul thou hast."

"Thy gown? why, ay;—come, tailor, let us see't. O mercy, God! what masquing stuff is here? What's this? a sleeve? 'tis like a demi-cannon: What, up and down, carv'd like an apple-tart? Here's snip and nip and cut and slish and slash, Like to a censer in a barber's shop: Why, what i' devil's name, tailor, call'st thou this!"

"'Twas when young Eustace wore his heart in's breeches."

"All his reverend wit Lies in his wardrobe."

"Great is the Tailor, but not the greatest."

"Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend."

"Hæc studia adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis solatium et perfugium præbent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur."

"If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England."

"Soldiers! When it is announced that a respected and beloved leader has died for our freedom in the course of the battle, do not grieve, do not lose hope! Observe that anyone who dies for his country is a fortunate man, but death takes what it wants, indiscriminately, in peace-time as well as in war. It is better to die with freedom than without it. Our fathers who have maintained our country in freedom for us have offered us their life in sacrifice; so let them be an example to you! Soldier, trader, peasant, young and old, man and woman, be united! Defend your country by helping each other! According to ancient custom, the women will stand in defence of their country by giving encouragement to the soldier and by caring for the wounded. Although Italy is doing everything possible to disunite us, whether Christian or Muslim we will unitedly resist. shelter and our shield is God. May our attackers' new weapons not deflect you from your thoughts which are dedicated to your defence of Ethiopia's freedom. Your King who speaks to you today will at that time be in your midst, prepared to shed his blood for the liberty of Ethiopia."

"O Granta! sweet Granta! where studious of ease, I slumbered seven years, and then lost my degrees."

"As turning the logs will make a dull fire burn, so changes of studies a dull brain."

"Make every private Sentinel, every Musquetier, both Judge, Jury, and Executioner."

"If we have no aptitude or natural taste for geometry this does not mean that our faculty for attention will not be developed by wrestling with a problem or studying a theorem. On the contrary it is almost an advantage. ... Without our knowing or feeling it, this apparently barren effort has brought more light into the soul. ... Every time that a human being succeeds in making an effort of attention with the sole idea of increasing his grasp of truth, he acquires a greater aptitude for grasping it, even if his effort produces no visible fruit."

"Learning proceeds until death and only then does it stop. ... Its purpose cannot be given up for even a moment. To pursue it is to be human, to give it up to be a beast."

"We see human heroism broken into units and say, this unit did little – might as well not have been. But in this way we might break up a great army into units; in this way we might break the sunlight into fragments, and think that this and the other might be cheaply parted with. Let us rather raise a monument to the soldiers whose brave hearts only kept the ranks unbroken and met death – a monument to the faithful who were not famous, and who are precious as the continuity of the sunbeams is precious, though some of them fall unseen and on barrenness."

"You are in some brown study."

"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried."