Top 100 Ethel Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. You don't give up on democracy every time you lose a vote, Ethel said crisply.
Ken Follett
#5. Musicals have clearly gotten more physical. You never saw Ethel Merman doing step aerobics.
Bruce Vilanch
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. I'm screaming for help and everybody's acting as if I'm singing Ethel Merman covers ...
David Foster Wallace
#14. Ethel Jackson was the cool side of my pillow when I had a fever.
Lesley Kagen
#15. Edith Ethel with the sweetest possible smile would beg the pillows off a whole hospital ward full of dying ... . She
Ford Madox Ford
#16. I fooled you, Ethel, I knew who you were all along. I can't believe you fell for that ma stuff. I just wanted to see if I could finally, finally make Ethel Rosenberg sing!
Tony Kushner
#17. Bernard placed one arm tightly round her. When will you marry me Ethel he uttered you must be my wife it has come to that I love you so intensly that if you say no I shall perforce dash my body to the brink of yon muddy river he panted wildly.
Daisy Ashford
#18. Ethel Merman would stay with a show for years and tour with it. So would Mary Martin, the great stars. They recognized the value of that success and nurtured it. Now, you come from Hollywood, you play 12 weeks and go away. I don't think that's the best policy.
Harold Prince
#19. Finding out with Ranger is a whole different deal than finding out with Lula. Lula and I are Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz. Ranger is Batman.
Janet Evanovich
#20. Next morning while imbibing his morning tea beneath his pink silken quilt Bernard decided he must marry Ethel with no more delay.
Daisy Ashford
#21. Perhaps some guest editors would keep Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in their peripheral vision. But Sylvia recognized their execution as the most extreme and gruesome example of McCarthy's red-baiting paranoia.
Elizabeth Winder
#22. I wasn't one to usually show off Lucy and Ethel because I was self-conscious of them, but money was money.
Mariana Zapata
#23. I was at dinner with Gene Wilder and imitated Ethel Barrymore for everyone.
Dom DeLuise
#24. I was lying in bed this morning and saying to myself, 'the remarkable thing about Ethel is her stupendous self-satisfaction' when in came your letter to confirm this profound psychological observation. How delighted I was!
Virginia Woolf
#25. Yet how bored they both looked, and how wearily Ethel regarded Jim sometimes, as if she wondered why she had trained the vines of her affection on such a wind-shaken poplar.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#26. My dream dinner party guests would be Ethel Kennedy, Truman Capote and Hunter S. Thompson.
Dylan Penn
#27. When I die, there will be people who send flowers to Ethel Mertz.
Vivian Vance
#28. The tragedy in the lives of the people is in what does not happen, rather than in what does happen -in all they do not realise.
Ethel Carnie -Miss Nobody
Ethel Carnie Holdsworth
#29. I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. It's incredible - Ethel Merman was a conventional singer. Her naming her child Ethel Merman, Jr., was, to me, one of the coolest feminist things.
Beth Ditto
#30. Always remember that we were innocent and could not wrong our conscience. -- Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, in their last letter to their sons, June 19, 1953.
Jillian Cantor
#31. When I moved to New York City in 1965, I wanted to be in theater. I was following my Ethel Barrymore dream. But I was too young to be Ethel.
Bette Midler
#33. There have been people who have tried to take advantage of me. They want to be linked to me just because I'm Ethel Merman.
Ethel Merman
#34. Mary Martin was Broadway's biggest closet king. Everyone thought Ethel (Merman) was butch and maybe a lesbian, but she wasn't. And everyone thought that lovely little Mary was Miss Femme, and she was
except next to her gay husband. In other words, don't judge a star by her cover.
Bob Fosse
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
Ethel Waters
#38. 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
#39. We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do.
Ethel Barrett
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
Ethel Waters
#45. Mom claimed that I could carry a tune at 2 or 3 years of age. Maybe she was a little prejudiced.
Ethel Merman
#47. I've never suffered stage fright. That fascinates people.
Ethel Merman
#49. If you take passionate interest in a subject, it is hard not to believe yourself specially equipped for it.
Ethel Smyth
#50. Death is the opening-and the closing-of a Door.
Ethel M. Dell
#51. 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
#52. Life Insurance Motto - Robbing the widows early and orphan.
Ethel Mumford
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#58. My beloved Mom and Pop always rated tops with each other, and that's the way it will always be.
Ethel Merman
#59. I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
Ethel Waters
#60. 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
#61. I work as often as I want and yet I'm free as a bird.
Ethel Merman
#62. People have a way of thinking that everything is finished when the very best of all may yet be in store.
Ethel M. Dell
#63. Though I was a Catholic, I recognized that Protestant churches had something.
Ethel Waters
#64. 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
#65. I've never cooked. I can't do much more in the kitchen than make a cup of tea and some toast.
Ethel Merman
#66. When I first went on the stage I was 17 and under the legal age for performers.
Ethel Waters
#67. Only a mother's heart can be
Patient enough for such as he.
Ethel Lynn Beers
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. The doors of Opportunity are marked 'Push' and 'Pull'.
Ethel Mumford
#71. If you see something wrong, if you speak out ... you can change it.
Ethel Kennedy
#72. I found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober me up.
Ethel Waters
#74. 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
#76. I preferred delivering my performance in person. I liked to be in control. You couldn't be in films.
Ethel Merman
#77. Always give them the old fire, even when you feel like a squashed cake of ice.
Ethel Merman
#78. 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
#79. You'll never prove you're too good for a job by not doing your best.
Ethel Merman
#80. 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
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. Whenever I write for hotel reservations, I always enclose a set of rules I have made for the hotels.
Ethel Waters
#86. Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.
Ethel Waters
#88. I am somebody cause God don't make no junk
Ethel Waters
#89. At a flea market I always head for the junk jewelry table first.
Ethel Merman
#90. I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow.
Ethel Waters
#91. I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.
Ethel Waters
#92. 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
#93. The formidable power of geography determines the character and performance of a people.
Ethel Wilson
#94. Deep, hearty, clean and compassionate laughter is vitamin-tastic fuel for the soul.
Ethel Russell-Ajisomo
#95. What I spent, is gone; what I kept, I lost; but what I gave away will be mine forever.
Ethel Percy Andrus
#96. The majority of critical, and plenty of uncritical, readers find quotations a bore.
Ethel Smyth
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. Music, in the past few years ... anything singable or understandable is square.
Ethel Merman
#100. What broke Mom's heart was realizing that her children knew nothing and cared nothing about the better side of life.
Ethel Waters
