I'm an ambitious person. I never consider myself in competition with anyone, and I'm not saying that from an arrogant standpoint, it's just that my journey started so, so long ago, and I'm still on it and I won't stand still.

Everyone knows how to talk, and no one knows what to say.

“Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.”

There are no short cuts to anywhere worth going.

Art is the signature of civilizations.

There is no shortcut to anyplace worth going.

Opera is an extremely disciplined art form, and every excess a singer indulges in has a direct effect on the voice.

There is something in me-I just can't stand to admit defeat.

Attachment to spiritual things is... just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.

My voice had a long, nonstop career. It deserves to be put to bed with quiet and dignity, not yanked out every once in a while to see if it can still do what it used to do. It can't.

You don't always get what you ask for, but you never get what you don't ask for... unless it's contagious!

There is a growing strength in women but it's in the forehead, not the forearm.

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.

“Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death.”

“No very black melencholy can come to he who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still.....”

“Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?”

“Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.”

“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

“You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.”

“For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak, But only thinks and does; Though surely out 'twill leak Without the help of Greek, Or any tongue.”

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”

“I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them.”

“AN ARTIST IS FIRST AN AMATEUR”

“If I put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire or to the maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame.”