Oscar Wilde: 'Do you mind if I smoke?' Sarah Bernhardt: 'I don't care if you burn.'

Legend remains victorious in spite of history.

I have, thanks to my travels, added to my stock all the superstitions of other countries. I know them all now, and in any critical moment of my life, they all rise up in armed legions for or against me.

Permanent success cannot be achieved except by incessant intellectual labour, always inspired by the ideal.

The dramatic art would appear to be rather a feminine art; it contains in itself all the artifices which belong to the province ofwoman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of woman.

... actors of the first water are not more plentiful than playwrights of genius.

[When asked at age 79 why her Paris apartment was located up many flights of stairs at the top of the building:] It's the only way I can still make the hearts of men beat faster.