Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness.
Helen Hayes

Actors work and slave and it is the color of your hair that can determine your fate in the end.
Helen Hayes

Age is not important unless you're a cheese.
Helen Hayes

Childhood is a short season.
Helen Hayes

Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up... a lot of people don't have the courage to do it.
Helen Hayes

Everybody starts at the top, and then has the problem of staying there. Lasting accomplishment, however, is still achieved through a long, slow climb and self-discipline.
Helen Hayes

From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings.
Helen Hayes

I cry out for order and find it only in art.
Helen Hayes

I'm leaving the screen because I don't think I am very good in the pictures and I have this beautiful dream that I'm elegant on the stage.
Helen Hayes

If you rest, you rust.
Helen Hayes


Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.
Helen Hayes

Mere longevity is a good thing for those who watch Life from the side lines. For those who play the game, an hour may be a year, a single day's work an achievement for eternity.
Helen Hayes

One has to grow up with good talk in order to form the habit of it.
Helen Hayes

Only the poet can look beyond the detail and see the whole picture.
Helen Hayes

People who refuse to rest honorably on their laurels when they reach retirement age seem very admirable to me.
Helen Hayes

Stardom can be a gilded slavery.
Helen Hayes

The good die young but not always. The wicked prevail but not consistently. I am confused by life, and I feel safe within the confines of the theatre.
Helen Hayes

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.
Helen Hayes

The story of a love is not important-what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
Helen Hayes

The truth is that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
Helen Hayes