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Wealth, beauty, and fame are transient. When those are gone, little is left except the need still to be useful, even though the parts get fewer.

— Gene Tierney Self-portrait (1979)

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More quotes by Gene Tierney

The word "actress" has always seemed less a job description to me than a title.

Self-portrait (1979)

Jealousy is, I think, the worst of all faults because it makes a victim of both parties.

Self-portrait (1979)

As long as I was playing someone else, I was fine. When I had to be myself, my problems began.

Self-portrait (1979)

I learned that carrying on while you're broken is not the answer. I tried to work harder and harder, thinking that work would cure everything. All it did was make things worse.

Self-portrait (1979)

I traveled in a world that once was—Hollywood of the war and immediate postwar years. And I existed in a world that never is—the prison of the mind. If what I have learned from these experiences can be summed up in one sentence, it would be this: life is not a movie. But I do not make that point in a sad or regretful way. I can only wonder, if my life had been a movie, would a director have cast Gene Tierney to play the part? The bitter with the sweet makes for a better part.

Self-portrait (1979)

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Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

Democritus Freeman (1948)

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.

William Wordsworth

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator.

William Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Gene Tierney (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.