Roberto Benigni famous quotes

It's a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Inspirational #Happiness #Gratitude

The most important thing is to continue to be yourself. The day after the Oscars, you have to get on with your life. To be honest and true to yourself.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Being Yourself #Important #Oscars

Sometimes poetry, it is incomprehensible. But we need incomprehensible stuff! It is very healthy to talk about incomprehensible things! It is very healthy! We need it!
-- Roberto Benigni

#Healthy #Stuff #Needs

This is a terrible mistake, because I used up all of my English.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Mistake #Oscars #Used

I do not think the American peoples are idiots. They are a very playful and sensitive people! I know them!
-- Roberto Benigni

#Thinking #People #Idiot

In Italy, the country where fascism was born, we have a particular relation with the Holocaust, but as a turning point in history it belongs to everybody in the world. It is a part of humanity.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Country #Holocaust #Humanity

My mother brought me magicians and witches, because I was very ugly, really revolting. So she thought somebody had put a spell on me - this is the truth - so she made me drink some horrible terrifying potions, for year.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Mother #Years #Ugly

My duty is to try to reach beauty. Cinema is emotion. When you laugh you cry.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Laughing #Trying #Cinema

For me, Fellini was like a watermelon. It is there. A watermelon cannot die.
-- Roberto Benigni

I am like a cartoon strip; I am like Donald Duck; everybody knows me in Italy.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Ducks #Cartoon #Donald Duck

What is more simple than to tell to a little boy, 'This is not the truth, it is a game?'
-- Roberto Benigni

#Simple #Boys #Games

My mother and my father went to the cinema for the first time when I made my first movie in 1978.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Mother #Father #Cinema

The Divine Comedy' is very sophisticated but also very popular.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Comedy #Sophisticated #Divine

Maybe sometimes I have been wrong with some movies. Anyway, I try to do my best.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Trying #Sometimes

I would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Parent #Poverty #Village

The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was 'Ben Hur'.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Saws #Firsts

Stanley Kubrick is one of the geniuses of this century.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Genius #Century #Stanley

Dante Alighieri is a universal poet, and great creators, they are writing for everybody always. Every single verse is very moving, and the beauty - if we don't understand, we just stay listening to the sound and it's like hearing music.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Moving #Writing #Listening

I could have made a small film and kept all the money from 'Life is Beautiful'. Instead, I spent more money than I had on 'Pinocchio', a very risky film.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Beautiful #Film #Life Is

Only comedians can talk about death, life, God and Virgin Mary. If I was a tragic actor, I couldn't allow myself. But with this accent I can do it. I can talk with death in person because I am a clown. Yes. And I am proud to be a clown - very much.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Comedian #Actors #Proud

When I first saw a Fellini movie, I came out of the movie theatre and decided to become a lawyer! I thought to myself, it's impossible to make something so beautiful!
-- Roberto Benigni

#Beautiful #Theatre #Saws

Fellini belongs to nature.
-- Roberto Benigni

I thank my parents for the greatest gift of all: poverty
-- Roberto Benigni

#Inspirational #Parent #Poverty

I remember in the circus learning that the clown was the prince, the high prince. I always thought that the high prince was the lion or the magician, but the clown is the most important.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Important #Circus #Lions

My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer, but, my childhood was very good. I am very grateful for my childhood, because it was full of gladness and good humanity.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Mother #Father #Grateful

There is nothing more beautiful in the world, enough to lose one's head. A sunset with a long nose, a starry sky that lies, a river searching for its father, a beautiful blue forest. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it's very mean, generous, magical, universal, a picture of freedom, of unrestrained desire to live, of pain and joy - a joy so powerful and sweet that it restores the souls in every spot on earth. The story of Pinocchio - nothing more beautiful in the world.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Beautiful #Sweet #Pain

To laugh or cry is the most beautiful thing in the world
-- Roberto Benigni

#Beautiful #Laughing #World

Fellini and Bunuel changed my life for me, they are my favourites. If it is true that movies are dreams, both of them, Fellini and Bunuel were shooting in a dream way.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Dream #Way #Shooting

The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was Ben Hur. We watched it outside in a corn field, and it ran backwards, so the first movie I ever saw was Ben Hur backwards.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Corn #Fields #Saws

To be in front of an audience and pretending, and to lie, this is the principle of acting.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Lying #Acting #Principles

The exquisite truth is to believe in something that maybe you know is a fiction, but you believe in it willingly.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Believe #Fiction #Truth Is

You're serving. You're not a servant. Serving is a supreme art. God is the first servant. God serves men but he's not a servant to men. - Eliseo Orefice
-- Roberto Benigni

#Art #Men #Firsts

It's me, it's my habit to perform live onstage every four, five years. In Italy, it's my habit.
-- Roberto Benigni

#Years #Four #Habit