Top 100 The Circus Quotes
#1. The circus collects the outsiders like a flame tempts moths.
Laura Lam
#2. Herr Thiessen is always pleased when the circus arrives in his native Germany, but this time he is particularly delighted that it has arrived quite near Munich, so there is no need for him to secure rooms in another city. Also,
Erin Morgenstern
#3. All dance has expression. If there is no expression, I prefer the circus. The performers do more dangerous, more difficult technical things than we do. But we are dancers. We have to express and we have to project.
Luis De La Fuente
#4. Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
Erica Jong
#5. Beauty is Nature in perfection; circularity is its chief attribute. Behold the full moon, the enchanting golf ball, the domes of splendid temples, the huckleberry pie, the wedding ring, the circus ring, the ring for the waiter, and the "round" of drinks.
O. Henry
#6. Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung.
P.T. Barnum
#7. I'm actually not a huge circus fan in the traditional sense, but I like a lot of the circus trappings of striped tents and caramel. I lean more towards Cirque du Soleil than Barnum and Bailey.
Erin Morgenstern
#8. The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know; in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.
E.B. White
#9. The tiger and the lion may be more powerful, but the wolf does not perform in the circus.
Unknown
#10. He had strawberry blond hair. That's enough right there. That's all you need to know. If you're a man with strawberry blond hair and you're not in the circus or a Viking, odds are you have not found your place in life and never will.
Paul Neilan
#11. My family traveled with a whole community to European festivals. My mum did gymnastics, freak show performances, and swung fire in the circus, so I followed her footsteps.
Neon Hitch
#12. I'm slowly learning that my happiest, most special moments happen when the circus is at its peak.
Emily Ley
#13. She felt like a juggler tossing torches into the air. The circus-master kept throwing more in. Sooner or later, one would fall, and the life she'd built would burn to cinders.
Courtney Milan
#14. It arrived only a few days ago and is still a novelty. Had it been present for longer, Caroline likely would have chosen a different dare, but the circus is currently the talk of the town, and Caroline likes to keep her dares en vogue.
Erin Morgenstern
#15. You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across?
Jodi Picoult
#16. On the high wire, within months, I'm able to master all the tricks they do in the circus, except I am not satisfied.
Philippe Petit
#18. At the circus, a careless mother may let her child take part in the experiments of a Chinese magician. He puts him in a box. He opens the box; it's empty. He closes it again. He opens it; the child reappears and goes back to his seat. Now it is no longer the same child. Nobody doubts it.
Jean Cocteau
#19. Not let the child run the circus, just have that child be the source of the creative voice.
Billy Corgan
#20. I was perfect for the circus. If she dared me, I'd do it. Love makes you stupid
Bruno Mars
#21. Word gets around when the circus comes to town, don't it?
Cormac McCarthy
#22. Nietzsche [10w]
Zarathustra's high-wire act is over;
the circus has left town.
Beryl Dov
#23. I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill. "Yes, sir, a clown ... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.
Harper Lee
#24. Hello, my sister, Libby, also your daughter, is snogging a potato in my bed. What are you going to do about it?' Dad started yelling uncontrollably. I wonder if he is having the male menopause? If he starts growing breasts, I will definitely be running away with the circus.
Louise Rennison
#25. It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.
[from "The Circus Animals' Desertion"]
W.B.Yeats
#26. There is so much that glows in the circus, from flames to lanterns to stars. I have heard the expression "trick of the light" applied to sights within Le Cirque des Reves so frequently that I sometimes suspect the entirety of the circus is itself a complex illusion of illumination" .
Erin Morgenstern
#27. Well, there's a piece of Maria in every song that I sing. And the price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings. And there is always one last light to turn out and one last bell to ring. And the last one out of the circus has to lock up everything.
Counting Crows
#28. When I was young, my family didn't go on outings to the circus or trips to Disneyland. We couldn't afford them. Instead, we stayed in our small rural West Texas town, and my parents took us to cemeteries.
Jenny Lawson
#29. In my day, MI6 - which I called the Circus in the books - stank of wartime nostalgia. People were defined by secret cachet: one man did something absolutely extraordinary in Norway; another was the darling of the French Resistance. We didn't even show passes to go in and out of the building.
John Le Carre
#30. Most people don't know that wrestling came out of the circus.
Billy Corgan
#31. When I was little, one of my father's friends owned a circus. For four absolutely incredible summers, I found myself being the only boy in Ireland who didn't dream of running away with the circus. I was in it!
Ian Beattie
#32. I'm divorced and I've been to the circus and seen the clowns. This ain't my first rodeo.
Naomi Judd
#33. JOIN THE CIRCUS OF CHAOS ... juggling, stilt walking, and other skills for socially acceptable procrastination.
Pat Murphy
#34. What do parents look like?"
"You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across? Like that.
Jodi Picoult
#35. For a long time, I debated about whether I would make movies or join the circus and work as a clown.
Denis Lavant
#36. I love musicals; I love the ballet, opera, the circus. It's all performance to me.
Ian McKellen
#37. Just because I don't look like a freak show, it doesn't mean I'm not part of the circus...
Colin Watts
#38. When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.
Edward R. Murrow
#39. At the end of the day, I'd love to see children stop begging their parents to go to the circus. That's what would make me most happy.
K.A. Applegate
#40. When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a baseball player and also join the circus. With the Yankees, I've accomplished both.
Graig Nettles
#41. OK, the rule is, you can [make love to] an elephant if you want to, but if you do you can't cover the circus.
A. M. Rosenthal
#42. I did a cake for the 60th birthday of Elton John, for Britney Spears' 27th birthday and for the 'Circus' album she put out - the cake had circus themes. I prepared a cake for a surprise 82nd birthday event for the architect Frank Gehry; the cake was comprised of mini-replicas of his buildings.
Ron Ben-Israel
#43. Well, I bought a ticket to the circus. I don't know why I was surprised to see elephants.
Norris Church Mailer
#44. And this is the straight dope, right here. These people are not exactly human. They don the dress but they're like monkeys dolled up in the circus. They're clever and can learn, but that is all.
Philip K. Dick
#45. Q: How is being at a singles bar different from going to the circus? A: At the circus the clowns don't talk.
Various
#46. I think the movie business and film crews are a little bit like the circus, in that we travel around like a pack and we're a big family for a finite period of time. We roll into someplace, cause a bunch of damage, and then roll out.
Francis Lawrence
#47. How many of these children would one day be queer? How many would be felled by the acronym? How many by something else? How many would forget the circus? How many would never see it at all? How many would join?
Trebor Healey
#48. For the last six or seven years the circus has no longer been in fashion. That is a pity. One should go to the circus, beyond any question of fashion, at least one or two times a year-I am not speaking here to the real enthusiasts, they know better than I what they have to do.
Adrienne Monnier
#49. It's like running away to join the circus, everyone wants to do it when they're young but then you grow up and get a proper job. But somebody's got to do it or you wouldn't have the circus.
Katie McGrath
#50. But I think the children of actors share a certain pragmatic approach. One is denied some of that 'running away with the circus' element of being an actor.
Toby Jones
#51. And while I want to spare Mia the circus, I don't care if the whole world knows we're together.
Gayle Forman
#52. They seek each other out, these people of such specific like mind. They tell of how they found the circus, how those first few steps were like magic.
Erin Morgenstern
#53. I dropped my juggling balls and my face grew embarrassed. It wasn't until then that I looked around the circus of life and noted all were too consumed on their own juggling act to see. This is when I learned to have fun, and kick the balls instead.
Stefanie Schneider
#54. This had been a bad section of town before the Circus moved in and brought in money, which attracted other businesses. The area had been gentrified not because of some government interference, but by good old-fashioned capitalism, which was one of Jean-Claude's favorite things.
Laurell K. Hamilton
#55. It would've been hard to do something else, to as it were, run away from the circus and become an accountant.
Samuel West
#56. I was born and raised in New York and I'm of an age where I want to just be home. But, you know, when you sign up to be an actor it's like joining the circus and the circus is not always going to be in your hometown.
Dean Winters
#57. Wine is bottled poetry, he thinks [...] He wonders if the poem of the circus could possibly be bottled.
Erin Morgenstern
#58. I remember in the circus learning that the clown was the prince, the high prince. I always thought that the high prince was the lion or the magician, but the clown is the most important.
Roberto Benigni
#59. The circus had been unlike anything I could ever imagine and I could not walk away. I wanted to be a part of the magic, create it and wield it with such skill that it looked effortless. I wanted to fly.
Laura Lam
#60. As a kid, the theatre always felt a bit like running away to join the circus.
Robert Sean Leonard
#61. I would like to reconcile the church and the circus. I wanted to transform the theatre ... to get my message across that there is only one God - the living man - the person sitting next to you. That is my religion. I believe that there is a sense to life.
Oleg Kulik
#62. The circus doesn't stop. A federal appeals court has postponed the recall election. How stupid are we? Even our recalls get recalled.
Jay Leno
#63. Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town.
George Carlin
#64. The Englishman walks before the law like a trained horse in the circus. He has the sense of legality in his bones, in his muscles.
Maxim Gorky
#65. There are tents, I am certain, that I have not discovered in my many visits to the circus. Though I have seen a great deal of the sights, traveled a number of the available paths, there are always corners that remain unexplored, doors that remain unopened. -Friedrick Thiessen, 1896
Erin Morgenstern
#66. I think there are times when I believe God welcomes the circus into our lives to give us an opportunity to show that there's another way to live and respond to things.
Tony Dungy
#67. The two-headed boy in the circus never had such a headache.
W.C. Fields
#70. I wanted to keep working because work was essentially fantastic - you got to be around people, you got to be in a family, and that family changed from job to job. It was like being in the circus.
Ben Mendelsohn
#71. I feel like I grew up in the circus. I know planes, trains and automobiles. And really talented, weird people.
Dakota Johnson
#72. Some kids dream of joining the circus, others of becoming a major league baseball player. I have been doubly blessed. As a member of the New York Yankees, I have gotten to do both.
Graig Nettles
#73. The money I pay for my cultural experiences came willingly from my own pocket - they were not the result of bread being removed from the mouths of the poor so that Miss Thing here could mince off to the circus smelling of roses.
Julie Burchill
#74. I hate clowns and I would never do anything getting near a clown, I can't go to the circus.
Ty Simpkins
#76. I probably worked every single entertainment medium, including some that don't exist. I worked the circus, carnival, I had my own medicine show, I worked 18 years of radio.
Al Lewis
#77. I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It's greed, plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, I'm joining the circus. Although I'm happily married, I spent a great deal of time mentally living with incompatible husbands.
Anne Tyler
#78. You picked a lemon, throw it away lemonade is overrated. Freaks should remain at the circus, not in your apartment. You already have one asshole. You don't need another. Make a space in your life for the glorious things you deserve. Have faith.
Greg Behrendt
#79. I fell asleep in an empty field, but woke up at the circus.
J.J. Howard
#80. If I had been born in the circus, my parents would have pushed me on that little high wire at four years old. That's when the body is most limber to learn those acrobatics.
Philippe Petit
#81. I'm very influenced by the circus. A lot of the dreams that I have, I'm in the circus.
Jeff Mangum
#82. Lord knows, I need a little action tonight or my vagina might just run off and join the circus.
Harper Sloan
#83. I've had 79 to 80 years of show business. I started when I was 5 with a man called Tom Mix. I didn't have time to go to school because I was in silent movies, I was in radio, I was in burlesque, I worked with the circus. I'm all show business!
George Sidney
#84. You start in April and cross to the time of May
One has you as it leaves, one as it comes
Since the edges of these months are yours and defer
To you, either of them suits your praises.
The Circus continues and the theatre's lauded palm,
Let this song, too, join the Circus spectacle.
Ovid
#85. Damn everything but the circus! ... The average 'painter' 'sculptor' 'poet' 'composer' 'playwright' is a person who cannot leap through a hoop from the back of a galloping horse, make people laugh with a clown's mouth, orchestrate twenty lions.
E. E. Cummings
#86. I was one in a million. I wasn't bright enough to realize the circus fat lady is, too
Stephen King
#87. We have all seen these circus elephants complete with tusks, ivory in their head and thick skins, who move around the circus ring and grab the tail of the elephant ahead of them.
John F. Kennedy
#88. Poets and painters are outside the class system, or rather they constitute a special class of their own, like the circus people and the Gypsies.
Gerald Brenan
#89. Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me
("The Circus Animal's Desertion")
W.B.Yeats
#90. The sun stands for energy and youth, which is what I thought the circus should be about.
Guy Laliberte
#91. I never went to acting school. I started in the circus, music hall, I was in a group, did kids' bits. I've always had this kind of insecurity being uneducated.
Rupert Graves
#92. Ah Ratty, what good times we'll have," said Mad Jack. "Just you and me, Ratty. We'll go cuttin' them reeds together, and if you're good we'll go to the circus when it comes to town and see the clowns. I love them clowns, Ratty. We'll have a good life together. Yes we will. Oh yes.
Angie Sage
#93. Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
Bob Dylan
#94. So far as the colleges go, the sideshows are swallowing up the circus.
Woodrow Wilson
#95. What do we lose without wild animal acts at the circus? Absolutely nothing, except the opportunity to be haunted and heartbroken.
K.A. Applegate
#96. He looks funny in a suit jacket, like a bear dressed up in costume for the circus. I would never tell him that, though.
Lauren Oliver
#97. Why the hell shouldn't I run away with the circus?
Sara Gruen
#100. My father used to describe how he'd love going, early in the morning, out on a location and waiting for the trucks to arrive and the circus to come to town. That's what it's like, every day, when you're making a film. It's the magic.
Barbara Broccoli
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
