Statement accepting the Screen Actors Guild Achievement Award, read by Julia Roberts, because of Audrey's failing health. (January 1993)
Context: I am more than ever awed and overwhelmed by the monumental talents it was my great, great privilege to work for and with. There is therefore no way I can thank you for this beautiful award without thanking all of them, because it is they who helped and honed, triggered and taught, pushed and pulled, dressed and photographed — and with endless patience and kindness and gentleness, guided and nurtured a totally unknown, insecure, inexperienced, skinny broad into a marketable commodity. I am proud to have been in a business that gives pleasure, creates beauty, and awakens our conscience, arouses compassion, and perhaps most importantly, gives millions a respite from our so violent world. Thank you, Screen Actors Guild and friends, for this huge honor — and for giving me this unique opportunity to express my deepest gratitude and love to all of those who have given me a career that has brought me nothing but happiness.
“I am no more humble than my talents require.”
As quoted in Memorable Quotations: Jewish Writers of the Past (2005) edited by Carol A. Dingle.
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Oscar Levant 42
American comedian, composer, pianist and actor 1906–1972Related quotes
“The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
A comment recalled by János Plesch in János, the Story of a Doctor (1947), p. 207. Also quoted in Einstein: the Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark (1971), p. 118 http://books.google.com/books?id=6IKVA0lY6MAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA118#v=onepage&q&f=false.
1940s
Variant: "When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing absolute knowledge." From The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2010), p. 26 http://books.google.com/books?id=G_iziBAPXtEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false. This book attributes it to Einstein and the Humanities (1979) by Dennis Ryan, p. 125, but Calaprice seems to have copied it wrong, since searching "inside the book" on this book's amazon page http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Humanities-Contributions-Dennis-Ryan/dp/0313253803 using the word "gift" shows that p. 125 actually gives the same quote as in János, the Story of a Doctor.
La critique souvent n'est pas une science; c'est un métier, où il faut plus de santé que d'esprit, plus de travail que de capacité, plus d'habitude que de génie. Si elle vient d'un homme qui ait moins de discernement que de lecture, et qu'elle s'exerce sur de certains chapitres, elle corrompt et les lecteurs et l'écrivain.
Aphorism 63
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit
“I have feelings too. I am still human. All I want is to be loved, for myself and for my talent.”