InspiringQuotes

Ethel Waters Quotes:

Ethel Waters quotes

Ocupation: Vocalist

Life: October 31, 1896 - September 1, 1977

Birthday: October 31

Death: September 1

famous quotes

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

Topics: Happiness, Inspiring, Success

quote we are all gifted that is our inheritance ethel waters Quotes

Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.

Topics: Phones, News, May, Good News

All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.

Topics: Epic, Men, Epidemics

Nothing can beat the smell of dew and flowers and the odor that comes out of the earth when the sun goes down.

Topics: Flower, Smell, Earth

I wanted to be with the kind of people I'd grown up with, but you can't go back to them and be one of them again, no matter how hard you try.

Topics: Inspirational, Teenager, People

I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow.

Topics: Sweat, Able, Brows

I never accepted the idea that I was all through. I guess no person who has once been a star can do that, ever.

Topics: Stars, Ideas, Accepted

The white audiences thought I was white, my features being what they are, and at every performance I'd have to take off my gloves to prove I was a spade.

Topics: White, Gloves, Spades

The big compliment came from the beer drinkers who didn't know me. They wouldn't drink or move when I sang. If they had their glasses in mid-air, the glasses wouldn't come down.

Topics: Moving, Beer, Glasses

Mom never quit on me. My only regret is that she didn't live long enough to share some of the money and comforts my work in show business has brought me.

Topics: Mom, Regret, Business

I had always loved John Ford's pictures. And I came to love him, too, but I was frightened to death working for him. He used the shock treatment while directing me.

Topics: Fog, Used, Treatment

Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.

Topics: Mom, Drinking, Childhood

In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.

Topics: Mom, Husband, Hard Life

I could depend a lot on my shaking, though I never shimmied vulgarly and only to express myself.

Topics: Black History, Black, Shaking

Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.

Topics: People, Praise, Criticize

Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show.

Topics: Success, Thinking, Play, Sojourners

I am an isolationist.

Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.

Topics: Fire, Authenticity, Burned

I learned early in life not to judge others. We outcasts are very happy and content to leave that job to our social superiors.

Topics: Jobs, Judging, Outsiders, Happy And Content

We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.

Topics: Missing, Quitting, Judgment

After years in white theaters I dreaded working in colored houses. The noise, the stomping, whistling, and cheering that hadn't annoyed me when I was young was now something I dreaded.

Topics: Cheer, Fear, Years, Stomping, Whistling

Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.

Topics: Ohio, Mohawks, Columbus, Columbus Ohio

We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.

Topics: Mom, Kitchen, Tin, Lard, Bathtubs

I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.

Topics: Hurt, Shy, Reason, Hurt Feelings, Been Hurt

It has been an ache and a joy both to look over this big shoulder of mine at all my yesterdays.

Topics: Yesterday, Joy, Looks

When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.

Topics: People, Pay, Privilege

I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.

Topics: Want, Affection, Tenderness

There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.

Topics: Hypocrisy, Kitchen, Hell

All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.

Topics: People, Wealthy

Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.

Topics: Salary, Asking, Want

Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.

Topics: Thinking, Yellow, Differences, Northerners

I have no acting technique I act instinctively. That's why I can't play any role that isn't based on something in my life.

Topics: Play, Acting, Technique

I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.

Topics: Outsiders

My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.

Topics: My Family, Whole Family, Instruments, Accompany

Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races.

Topics: Race, Faults, Virtue

New York is only 97 miles from Philadelphia but was the Big Time as no other American city has ever been.

Topics: New York, Cities, Philadelphia, American Cities

Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to me.

Topics: Mother, Evangelism, Release

There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business.

Topics: Business, Undertaker, Shows

There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.

Topics: Emotional, People, Singing

I have always been psychic. The walls of any room I walk into talk to me.

Topics: Wall, Psychics, Rooms

I am somebody cause God don't make no junk

Topics: Junk, Causes

You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.

Topics: Mother, Importance, Persons

There had been lots of crises in my life. And there was plenty of spunk and battle cry still left in me.

Topics: Battle, Spunk, Cry, Battle Cry

I'm not afraid to die. I'm looking forward to it. I know the Lord has His arms wrapped around this big sparrow.

Topics: Sparrows, Arms, Looking Forward

I wondered what I would do if I didn't have my God to turn to and be able to read the Book He had divinely inspired.

Topics: Book, Able, Inspired

Whenever I write for hotel reservations, I always enclose a set of rules I have made for the hotels.

Topics: Writing, Made, Reservations

My aunts lived on liquor and seldom felt like eating much. I don't know what's wrong about a kid stealing when he's hungry.

Topics: Kids, Aunt, Eating

We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.

Topics: Girl, Towns, Accommodations

The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.

Topics: Home, Long, Harlem

Twenty-five years is a long time for a girl to live out of a trunk, and after looking over a few houses, I fell in love with one in Southwest Los Angeles.

Topics: Girl, Years, Long

If whites bored me, it was because they bored themselves. They seemed to get little fun out of life and were desperately lonely.

Topics: Lonely, Fun, Bored

I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.

Topics: Middle, Shows

I don't care to dress up except when it is necessary or good for my business.

Topics: Dresses, Care, I Don't Care

I know the most terrible thing that can happen to a woman. That is the gang-up. Men put you to sleep with their drops and one man after another goes in and takes you.

Topics: Sleep, Men, Gang

My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.

Topics: Mother, Father, Knives

Among Negroes it is a bad omen when someone knocks on the door of a house where a person has died.

Topics: Doors, House, Omen

I dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.

Topics: Clothes, Partners, Spending

When I act I try to express the suffering or joy I've known during my lifetime.

Topics: Joy, Suffering, Trying

I found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober me up.

Topics: Couple, Beer, Giving

There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.

Topics: White, Individual, Type

I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.

Topics: Wedlock, Born

I never posed as a saint. I would have slept with a man for nothing if I liked him well enough.

Topics: Men, Saint, Enough

I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.

Topics: Memories, Elephants, Mind, Probing

When I first went on the stage I was 17 and under the legal age for performers.

Topics: Age, Firsts, Stage

What impressed me most about New York were its huge apartment houses.

Topics: New York, House, Apartment

What broke Mom's heart was realizing that her children knew nothing and cared nothing about the better side of life.

Topics: Mom, Children, Heart

Today I blame only certain agents for my long eclipse as a public entertainer.

Topics: Long, Agents, Today

Though I was a Catholic, I recognized that Protestant churches had something.

Topics: Catholic, Church, Protestants

If I wanted pity, I got it because I'm illegitimate. And when I didn't want it I was mean and nasty.

Topics: Mean, Want, Nasty

Related Authors

Alberta Hunter quotes

Alberta Hunter
Annette Hanshaw quotes

Annette Hanshaw
Benny Goodman quotes

Benny Goodman
Bessie Smith quotes

Bessie Smith
Billie Holiday quotes

Billie Holiday
Butterfly McQueen quotes

Butterfly McQueen
Cab Calloway quotes

Cab Calloway
Cliff Barrows quotes

Cliff Barrows
Crystal Waters quotes

Crystal Waters
Duke Ellington quotes

Duke Ellington
Eddie Cantor quotes

Eddie Cantor
Ella Fitzgerald quotes

Ella Fitzgerald
Ethel Barrymore quotes

Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Merman quotes

Ethel Merman
Eubie Blake quotes

Eubie Blake
Eva Jessye quotes

Eva Jessye
Fats Waller quotes

Fats Waller
Fredi Washington quotes

Fredi Washington
Gail Buckley quotes

Gail Buckley
George Gershwin quotes

George Gershwin
Hattie McDaniel quotes

Hattie McDaniel
Hazel Scott quotes

Hazel Scott
Ida Cox quotes

Ida Cox
Irving Berlin quotes

Irving Berlin
Josephine Baker quotes

Josephine Baker
Julie Harris quotes

Julie Harris
Kristin Hunter quotes

Kristin Hunter
Lena Horne quotes

Lena Horne
Louis Armstrong quotes

Louis Armstrong
Ma Rainey quotes

Ma Rainey
Mistinguett quotes

Mistinguett
Paul Whiteman quotes

Paul Whiteman
Pearl Bailey quotes

Pearl Bailey
Sidney Howard quotes

Sidney Howard
Sophie Tucker quotes

Sophie Tucker
Ted Koehler quotes

Ted Koehler
Tommy Dorsey quotes

Tommy Dorsey

Authors starting with Letter

Topics starting with Letter