“Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do.”

Our Constitution was not intended to be used by … any group to foist its personal religious beliefs on the rest of us.

The only time I am ever miserable is when I do something just for the money.

I wear my sort of clothes to save me the trouble of deciding which clothes to wear.

Love fattens on smooth words.

You learn in life that the only person you can really correct and change is yourself.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only what you are expecting to give — which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving.

A boy sows a wild oat or two, the world winks. A girl does the same — scandal.

I was brought up by two extremely intelligent people who gave me the greatest gift that man can give anyone, and that is freedom from fear.

I’ve always thought men and women are not too well suited to each other. It’s inevitable that they should come together, but, again, how well suited are they to live together in the same house?

The notion that work is a burden is a terrible mistake. Working and facing up to one’s responsibilities: That’s happiness.

You are the only person you can actually change.

All my life, I’ve stayed at parties too long because I didn’t know when to go.

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating.

I realised long ago that skirts are hopeless. Anytime I hear a man say he prefers a woman in a skirt, I say, ‘Try one. Try a skirt.’

It’s either some kind of electricity or some kind of energy. I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is, I’ve got it.

She’s a beautiful wildness on fire.

She has a choice. She can either accept a life of misery or she can struggle against it. And she chooses to struggle…she fails in the end but there’s something beautiful and even heroic in her rebellion.

If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who’s coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help.

Where youthful beauty is unconscious, mature beauty is knowing and sophisticated.

The audience’s reactions are more important: if people believe in the love story, it’s because they love how we’ve acted. That’s the most beautiful award. It’s very important for me, people appreciating what I do.

O innocence, how glorious and happy a portion art thou to the breast that possesses thee! thou fearest neither the eyes nor the tongues of men. Truth, the most powerful of all things, is thy strongest friend; and the brighter the light is in which thou art displayed, the more it discovers thy transcendent beauties.

I think life is perverse. It can be beautiful, but it won’t.

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.