Bette Davis Quotes

It's better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for someone you're not. It's a sign of your worth sometimes, if you're hated by the right people.

You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good.

There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.

Getting old is not for sissies.

Some young Hollywood starlets remind me of my grandmother's old farmhouse -- all painted up nice on the front side, a big swing on the backside, and nothing whatsoever in the attic.

You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.

If everyone likes you, you're not doing it right.

A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.

If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent.

My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.

The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead.

I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he'd be dead within a year.

I was thought to be 'stuck up.' I wasn't. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure.

There may be a heaven, but if Joan Crawford is there, I'm not going.

It's true we don't know what we've got until its gone, but we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives. Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.

Being called very, very difficult is the beginning of success. Until you're called very, very difficult you're really nobody at all.

You should know me well enough by now to know I don't ask for things I don't think I can get.

I want to die with my high heels on, still in action.

Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.

Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.

I am a woman meant for a man, but I never found a man who could compete.

Life is the past, the present and the perhaps.

If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.

One begins to realize that one is getting old when the birthday candles weigh more than the cake.

Old age is no place for sissies.

I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable... I suppose I'm larger than life.

I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck like an ostrich and long, limp hair. You just have to be good to survive with that equipment.

Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.

The male ego with few exceptions is elephantine to start with.

You know what I'm going to have on my gravestone? 'She did it the hard way.'

One can make more enemies as a female with a brain, I think.

May each of my grandsons know, at an early age, what his life's ambition is -- and may he be successful in his pursuit of that goal.

I wouldn't piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.

I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.

Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they're phonies.

It's a rare man who can stand being around an intelligent woman, let alone married to her.

You know what nostalgia is, don't you? It's basically a matter of recalling the fun without reliving the pain.

It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies.

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.

There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.

People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.

Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.

The secret of marriage is: separate bedrooms and separate bathrooms.

I was never very interested in boys - and there were plenty of them - vying with one another to see how many famous women they would get into the hay.

Success is built on disappointment, and disappointment is inherent in all success.

The out-of-work actor wears out more than shoe leather. The very sensibilities that make him an artist are shattered by the disregard he is shown as a human being.

You mustn't miss the moment. There's only one first sailing into Rio harbor.

Men become much more attractive when they start looking older. But it doesn't do much for women, though we do have an advantage: make-up.

Home is where you go to when you've nowhere to go.