Ruth Gordon Quotes

Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.

Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.

Try something new each day. After all, we're given life to find it out. It doesn't last forever.

Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, face the facts.

Sometimes what you want you don't get until you don't want it anymore.

Get up early in the morning before everybody has breathed up all the good air.

My body is on the earth, but my head is in the stars.

To get it right, be born with luck or else make it. Never give up. A little money helps, but what really gets it right is to never face the facts.

Vice, virtue - it's best not to be too moral. You'll cheat yourself out of too much life.

When you finally learn how to do it, you're too old for the good parts.

I feel that much of the world's sorrow comes from people who are this, yet allow themselves to be treated as that.

Life is getting through the moment. The philosopher William James says to cultivate the cheerful attitude. Now nobody had more trouble than he did -- except me. I had more trouble in my life than anybody. But your first big trouble can be a bonanza if you live through it. Get through the first trouble, you'll probably make it through the next one.

At seventy-four I'm getting minor raves on my looks, but I'm caught in the middle. Who knows what seventy-four looks like? Who cares? But if I'd listened to my friends, I could now lie and say I'm eighty-four. For eighty-four, the way I look is spectacular.

Live long enough and you'll come into pensions, a lovely thing. Presents every month from people you didn't know cared.

Discussing how old you are is the temple of boredom.

Anything that begins 'I don't know how to tell you this' is never good news.

A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They're just backing away from life.

I never got a job I didn't create for myself.

Courage is like a strain of yoghurt culture, if you have some you can have some more.

Acting is the use of human experience with talent added.

In the old days, ptomaine poisoning was a cover-all. If you missed a show and you were young, it meant you were having an abortion. If you were old, it meant you were having a face lift.

In our family we don't divorce our men - we bury them.

Despair is your friend in show business. I don't believe you can act if happiness is your lot. It's the ups that keep you living and the downs that mete out talent.

To be somebody, you must last.

The very best impromptu speeches are the ones written well in advance.