“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, A stage, where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.”
— William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
“But even a physical deficiency can be overcome by that faculty for taking infinite pains which may not be genius but is certainly a good substitute for it.”
— Ellen Terry, The Story of My Life (1908)
“If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber’d here While these visions did appear.”
— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
— George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)
“Once more I reflect that a face is the chiefest equipment of the actor.”
— Ellen Terry, The Story of My Life (1908)
“The most pleasant feature in the profession of a player, and which, indeed, is peculiar to it, is that we not only admire the talents of those who adorn it, but we contract a personal intimacy with them.”
— William Hazlitt, The Round Table (1817)
“But where and how is one to seek those roads into the secret sources of inspiration? This is the question that must serve as the fundamental life problem of every true actor.”
— Konstantin Stanislavski, My Life in Art (1924)
“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.”
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“To act for the first time in Shakespeare, in a theater where my sister had already done something for our name, and before royalty, was surely a good beginning.”
— Ellen Terry, The Story of My Life (1908)
“And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.”
— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“In my search for characterization I looked for it in real life, and when I found it, tried to carry it on to the stage.”
— Konstantin Stanislavski, My Life in Art (1924)
“The artist’s work is to show us ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge of ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as surely as any woman creates new men.”
— George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)
The Salon library
This is today’s sample of twelve. The whole collection is in the Salon.
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truly comes from. No internet folklore, no misattributions.
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