A defective voice will always ...

A defective voice will always preclude an artist from achieving the complete development of his art, however intelligent he may be.... The voice is an instrument which the artist must learn to use with suppleness and sureness, as if it were a limb.
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 Sarah Bernhardt

Quotes from the same author

The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions.
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 Sarah Bernhardt
If I have a foreign accent—which I much regret—it is cosmopolitan, but not Teutonic. I am a daughter of the great Jewish race, and my somewhat uncultivated language is the outcome of our enforced wanderings.
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 Sarah Bernhardt
Although all new ideas are born in France, they are not readily adopted there. It seems that they must first commence to prosper in a foreign country.
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 Sarah Bernhardt
... actors of the first water are not more plentiful than playwrights of genius.
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 Sarah Bernhardt
The artist's personality must be left in his dressing-room; his soul must be denuded of its own sensations and clothed with the base or noble qualities he is called upon to exhibit.... [he] must leave behind him the cares and vexations of life, throw aside his personality for several hours, and move in the dream of another life, forgetting everything.
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 Sarah Bernhardt