A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.
--Bette Davis
An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring... I ought to know.
--Bette Davis
Anyone who says life begins at forty is full of it.
--Bette Davis
Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
--Bette Davis
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.
--Bette Davis
Being called very, very difficult is the beginning of success. Until you've been called very, very difficult you're really nobody at all.
--Bette Davis
Everybody has a heart. Except some people.
--Bette Davis
From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.
--Bette Davis
Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me.
--Bette Davis
I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.
--Bette Davis
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.
--Bette Davis
I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.
--Bette Davis
I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears.
--Bette Davis
I never married anybody I didn't think I loved.
--Bette Davis
I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad director.
--Bette Davis
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.
--Bette Davis
I've no time for broads who want to rule the world alone. Without men, who'd do up the zipper on the back of your dress?
--Bette Davis
If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.
--Quentin Crisp
If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
--Bette Davis
If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it.
--Bette Davis
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.
--Bette Davis
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.
--Bette Davis
Just because someone dies (Joan Crawford) doesn't mean they've changed.
--Bette Davis
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone- but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
--Bette Davis
Marriage needs communication- and separate baths.
--Bette Davis
Old age ain't no place for sissies.
--Bette Davis
Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.
--Bette Davis
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.
--Bette Davis
Strong women only marry weak men.
--Bette Davis
The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God's joke on humanity.
--Bette Davis
The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can't get work in the movies.
--Bette Davis
The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They are bottomless. They are insatiable. They are always parched and always bitter. They are everyone's concern and like vampires they suck our life's blood.
--Bette Davis
There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.
--Bette Davis
There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.
--Bette Davis
There goes the famous good time that was had by all.
--Bette Davis
When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.
--Bette Davis
With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying.
--Bette Davis
You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.
--Bette Davis
Found 38 occurence(s) in 52,059 quotation(s).