The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions.

The artist's personality must be left in his dressing-room; his soul must be denuded of its own sensations and clothed with the base or noble qualities he is called upon to exhibit.... [he] must leave behind him the cares and vexations of life, throw aside his personality for several hours, and move in the dream of another life, forgetting everything.

Slow down? Rest? With all eternity before me?

We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget.

Alas, we are the victims of advertisement. Those who taste the joys and sorrows of fame when they have passed forty, know how to look after themselves. They know what is concealed beneath the flowers, and what the gossip, the calumnies, and the praise are worth. But as for those who win fame when they are twenty, they know nothing, and are caught up in the whirlpool.

I refuse the title of artist to those who owe their reputations to a physical deformity. I regard them as buffoons.

He who is incapable of feeling strong passions, of being shaken by anger, of living in every sense of the word, will never be a good actor.