Beverly Sills Quotes

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

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

I don't share blame. I don't share credit. And I don't share desserts.

I can't be happy every day but I can be cheerful.

In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.

A happy woman is one who has no cares at all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn't let them get her down.

I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity. I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not - more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving.

Art is the signature of civilizations.

There is no shortcut to anyplace worth going.

I've always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up.

There is no short cut to a place worth going.

Just sing it. Don't prove you can sing it. I know you can, you know you can. So just do it, because if you try to prove it, you'll lose.

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.

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.

I really do believe I can accomplish a great deal with a big grin, I know some people find that disconcerting, but that doesn't matter.

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

I've always tried to be cheerful, because I think people who whine are boring, and I never could tolerate bores.

There were times in my career ... when I felt like a trapeze artist doing dangerous somersaults without a net underneath. When you execute those somersaults flawlessly, the audience feels the same sense of triumph the performer does.

Opera is music AND drama. I'm prepared to sacrifice the beautiful note for the meaningful sound any time... I can make a pretty tone as well as anyone, but there are times when the drama of a scene demands the opposite of a pretty sound.

It seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not, more important now was for me to love them

There are an awful lot of skinny people in the cemetery.

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

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