Top 100 Ethel Quotes
#1. I am purely evil;
Hear the thrum
of my evil engine;
Evilly I come.
The stars are thick as flowers
In the meadows of July;
A fine night for murder
Winging through the sky.
Ethel Mannin
#2. For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of a Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a MaCaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinocerus.
Ethel Barrymore
#3. All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
Ethel Waters
#4. I am rather observant, and have a habit of putting things together. I tell you that so that you may be careful when you don't want me to know a thing.
Ethel Lilian Voynich
#5. We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do.
Ethel Barrett
#7. Fundamentally I feel that there is as much difference between the stage and the films as between a piano and a violin. Normally you can't become a virtuoso in both.
Ethel Barrymore
#8. We learn the inner secret of happiness when we learn to direct our inner drives, our interest and our attention to something besides ourselves.
Ethel Percy Andrus
#9. I'd carry the mail for you, Ethel,
Stop running around with that pup,
He's got a car, sure, and jack to throw
Like water but what does he want?
What do they all want? something easy,
Something that somebody else worked for.
Ethel, lay off rich kids, you'll end dirty.
Kenneth Patchen
#10. My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
Ethel Waters
#12. Mom claimed that I could carry a tune at 2 or 3 years of age. Maybe she was a little prejudiced.
Ethel Merman
#14. I've never suffered stage fright. That fascinates people.
Ethel Merman
#15. My cat, Ethel, is an indoor cat but somehow she's sneakin' out at night. 'Cause the other morning I found a stamp on her paw ... I wouldn't have noticed myself, but I just bought this new black light and she passed right under it and I said, 'Hey, what's that on you paw?
Ellen DeGeneres
#17. If you take passionate interest in a subject, it is hard not to believe yourself specially equipped for it.
Ethel Smyth
#18. Death is the opening-and the closing-of a Door.
Ethel M. Dell
#19. My first paid role was my first job out of drama school, which was 'Just William.' It was a BBC TV show. I played Ethel.
Lily James
#20. Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.
Ethel Waters
#21. Life Insurance Motto - Robbing the widows early and orphan.
Ethel Mumford
#22. I feel I must fight for [my music], because I want women to turn their minds to big and difficult jobs; not just to go on hugging the shore, afraid to put out to sea.
Ethel Smyth
#23. If you have found the way of sacrifice, the way that leads to peace; if you have joined with loving comrades to bring deliverance to them that weep and mourn in secret; then see to it that your soul be free from envy and passion and your heart as an altar where the sacred fire burns eternally.
Ethel Lilian Voynich
#24. The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure - if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.
Ethel Barrymore
#25. The training of children is such a serous thing, and it means so much to them to be surrounded from the very beginning with good influences, that I should have thought the holier a man's vocation and the purer his life, the more fit he is to be a father
Ethel Lilian Voynich
#27. My beloved Mom and Pop always rated tops with each other, and that's the way it will always be.
Ethel Merman
#28. I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
Ethel Waters
#29. Well, it so happens that I have had a spinal curvature since I was about thirteen and every once in a while that has given me some trouble, and at that time it began to kick up again. and occasionally I have to get into bed and nurse a severe backache.
Julius And Ethel Rosenberg
#30. I work as often as I want and yet I'm free as a bird.
Ethel Merman
#31. People have a way of thinking that everything is finished when the very best of all may yet be in store.
Ethel M. Dell
#32. Though I was a Catholic, I recognized that Protestant churches had something.
Ethel Waters
#33. Elia Kazan understood my problems. He was able to bring out the very best in me. He gave me credit for my intelligence.
Ethel Waters
#34. I've never cooked. I can't do much more in the kitchen than make a cup of tea and some toast.
Ethel Merman
#35. When I first went on the stage I was 17 and under the legal age for performers.
Ethel Waters
#36. Only a mother's heart can be
Patient enough for such as he.
Ethel Lynn Beers
#37. You don't give up on democracy every time you lose a vote, Ethel said crisply.
Ken Follett
#38. Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.
Ethel Waters
#39. Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.
Ethel Waters
#40. The doors of Opportunity are marked 'Push' and 'Pull'.
Ethel Mumford
#41. If you see something wrong, if you speak out ... you can change it.
Ethel Kennedy
#42. I found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober me up.
Ethel Waters
#44. If you are going to say a thing the substance of which is a big pill for your readers to swallow, there is no use in frightening them at the beginning by the form.
Ethel Lilian Voynich
#46. I preferred delivering my performance in person. I liked to be in control. You couldn't be in films.
Ethel Merman
#47. Always give them the old fire, even when you feel like a squashed cake of ice.
Ethel Merman
#48. The old men were still running the country. The politicians who had caused millions of deaths were now celebrating, as if they had done something wonderful.
Ken Follett
#49. You'll never prove you're too good for a job by not doing your best.
Ethel Merman
#50. Night after night I went to sleep murmuring, 'To-morrow I will be easy, strong, quick, supple, accurate, dashing and self-controlled all at once!' For not less than this is necessary in the Game of Life called Golf.
Ethel Smyth
#52. So Captain Faith conducted the prince and his mighty captains and men of war into the castle in the very heart of Mansoul. Prince Emmanuel had come home.
Ethel Barrett
#53. Musicals have clearly gotten more physical. You never saw Ethel Merman doing step aerobics.
Bruce Vilanch
#54. She made a gesture of impatience. 'Do you never think of the future?'
'Not in your presence,' laughed Nick. 'I think of you - you - and only you. Didn't you know?
Ethel M. Dell
#55. Whenever I write for hotel reservations, I always enclose a set of rules I have made for the hotels.
Ethel Waters
#57. Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.
Ethel Waters
#59. The three theater peeps I would love to dine with are Mel Brooks, because he is so funny; Stephen Sondheim, because he is a god-like genius; and Ethel Merman, to compare notes on fabulous belting.
Nancy Allen
#60. I am somebody cause God don't make no junk
Ethel Waters
#61. At a flea market I always head for the junk jewelry table first.
Ethel Merman
#62. I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow.
Ethel Waters
#63. I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.
Ethel Waters
#64. I dare say you will think it an absurd prejudice; but a human body, to me, is a sacred thing; I don't like to see it treated irreverently and made hideous.
Ethel Lilian Voynich
#65. The formidable power of geography determines the character and performance of a people.
Ethel Wilson
#66. Deep, hearty, clean and compassionate laughter is vitamin-tastic fuel for the soul.
Ethel Russell-Ajisomo
#67. What I spent, is gone; what I kept, I lost; but what I gave away will be mine forever.
Ethel Percy Andrus
#68. The majority of critical, and plenty of uncritical, readers find quotations a bore.
Ethel Smyth
#69. And what if Britain lost? There would be a financial crisis, unemployment, and destitution. Working-class men would take up Ethel's father's cry and say that they had never been allowed to vote for the war. The people's rage against their rulers would be boundless.
Ken Follett
#70. I have plenty of invitations to go places, lots to do. If I'm not working, I go to have my hair taken care of and work at needlepoint.
Ethel Merman
#71. He brewed his tea in a blue china pot, poured it into a chipped white cup with forget-me-nots on the handle, and dropped in a dollop of honey and cream. He sat by the window, cup in hand, watching the first snow fall. "I am," he sighed deeply, "contented as a clam. I am a most happy man.
Ethel Pochocki
#72. Music, in the past few years ... anything singable or understandable is square.
Ethel Merman
#73. What broke Mom's heart was realizing that her children knew nothing and cared nothing about the better side of life.
Ethel Waters
#74. I never accepted the idea that I was all through. I guess no person who has once been a star can do that, ever.
Ethel Waters
#75. I could depend a lot on my shaking, though I never shimmied vulgarly and only to express myself.
Ethel Waters
#76. We are all given the ingredients of happiness, but the mixing is left to ourselves.
Ethel M. Dell
#77. Talking to strangers sounded like talking to no one, which Henry had some firsthand experience in- in real life. It was lonely. Almost as lonely as Lake View Cemetery, where he'd buried Ethel.
Jamie Ford
#78. Mom never quit on me. My only regret is that she didn't live long enough to share some of the money and comforts my work in show business has brought me.
Ethel Waters
#79. I haven't hurt you ... if I have, it's the faithful wound of a friend.
Ethel M. Dell
#80. I can never remember being afraid of an audience. If the audience could do better, they'd be up here on stage and I'd be out there watching them.
Ethel Merman
#81. That's the worst of doctors. They are so keen about the body, but they don't study the soul at all.
Ethel M. Dell
#83. None of the seven is really good, for the excellent reason that Australian children never are.
Ethel Turner
#84. No one in the world can beat Ella Fitzgerald as a riff singer.
Ethel Waters
#85. I learned from Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Adelaide Hall, the Nicholas Brothers, the whole thing, the whole schmear. [The Cotton Club] was a great place because it hired us, for one thing, at a time when it was really rough [for Black performers].
Lena Horne
#86. We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
Ethel Waters
#87. When you are in deep conflict about something, sometimes the most trivial thing can tip the scales.
Ethel Merman
#88. An ounce of convention is worth a pound of explanation.
Ethel Mumford
#89. I quite agree with you that it is detestably malicious. But the worst thing about it is that it's all true.
Ethel Lilian Voynich
#90. I had always loved John Ford's pictures. And I came to love him, too, but I was frightened to death working for him. He used the shock treatment while directing me.
Ethel Waters
#91. There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business.
Ethel Waters
#92. What his son, Marty, never fully understood was that deep down there was an Ethel-shaped hole in Henry's life, and without her, all he felt was the draft of loneliness, cold and sharp, the years slipping away like blood from a wound that never heals.
Jamie Ford
#93. I wouldn't change one thing about my professional life, and I make it a point not to dwell on my mistakes.
Ethel Merman
#94. No one is more trustworthy than the repentant sinner who has been found out.
Ethel Smyth
#95. People should not judge failed love affairs as failed experiences, but as part of the growth process. Something does not have to end well for it to have been one of the most valuable experiences of a lifetime.
Ethel Person
#96. If you do a musical, it's really thrilling and it's a lot of work, but it's very rewarding. I would say, for me, what I like best is what I do, which is, I call it vaudeville, I call it live, I call it in concert, I call it what Bette Midler does, and what Garland did for years, and Ethel Merman.
Debbie Reynolds
#97. I am her friend, and her tongue is in my mouth. I can speak her sentiments for her, though Ethel Waters can do very well indeed in speaking for herself.
Zora Neale Hurston
#98. For anyone to achieve something, he will have to show a little courage. You're only on this earth once. You must give it all you've got.
Ethel Kennedy
#100. Remember what your own Shelley says: 'The past is Death's, the future is thine own.' Take it, while it is still yours, and fix your mind, not on what you may have done long ago to hurt, but on what you can do now to help.
Ethel Lilian Voynich
