Best quotes by Katharine Hepburn

If you survive long enough, you're revered - rather like an old building.

It's a rather rude gesture, but at least it's clear what you mean.

I love rain. It's lucky, I always think.

Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.

Bogart was like Henry Fonda - proud and happy to be an actor.

I was fearless...and lawless.

I loved Spencer Tracy. I would have done anything for him.

Vitality! That's the pursuit of life, isn't it?

Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I'm past that age.

We were brought up in the school that teaches: You do what the script tells you. Deliver the goods without comment. Live it-do it-or shut up. After all, the writer is what's important. If the script is good and you don't get in its way, it will come off okay. I never discussed a script with Spence [Spencer Tracy]; we just did it. The same with Hank [Henry Fonda] in On Golden Pond. Naturally and unconsciously we joined into what I call a musical necessity-the chemistry that brings out the essence of the characters and the work.

Wouldn't it be great if people could get to live suddenly as often as they die suddenly?

He's worked his entire life and he's never lived a single moment, I mean not a moment, in the real world.

Life is very hard, isn't it? It does kill you, after all.

I wear my sort of clothes to save me the trouble of deciding which clothes to wear.

People who want to be famous are really loners. Or they should be.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn't interest you, don't do it - I would have made a terrible mother.

You can say or write anything about me you like. Just don't, for any reason, ever tell the truth.

Trying to be fascinating is an asinine position to be in.

A boy sows a wild oat or two, the world winks. A girl does the same -- scandal.

It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating.

As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

I like to move fast, and wearing high heels was tough, and low heels with a skirt is unattractive. So pants took over.

I don't regret anything I've ever done; as long as I enjoyed it at the time

I could peel you like a pear and god himself would see the justice in it.

People think that I'm tough and strong and that I kicked my way through everything. But they are wrong. The truth is that when I was young I was adorable and a trembling wreck.

To live creatively free, do what you know how to do now, then 'act as if' you know how to do the rest.

It's how you live that really counts

I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret... if you have any sense, and if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid.

All my life, I've stayed at parties too long because I didn't know when to go.

I don't feel the slightest interest in the next world; I think it's here. And I think anything good that you're going to do, you should do for other people here and not so you can try to have a happy time in the next world.

There are no laurels in life, just new challenges.

I've made forty-three pictures. Naturally I'm adorable in all of them.

You give because you love and cannot help giving.

Acting is a nice childish profession - pretending you're someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

You don't pick who you fall in love with. There are so few people to love. It's hard for one adult to even like another. Almost impossible.

I'm a legend because I've survived over a long period of time and still seem to be master of my fate - I'm still paddling the goddamned boat myself.

Being an actor is such a humiliating experience because you are selling yourself to the public, your face, your personality, and that is humiliating. As you get older, it becomes more humiliating because you've got less to sell.

Loved people are loving people.

My, I like Judy Holliday! She looks like a Monet model. And she's so - so defenseless. I like defenseless people. They're the best.

I don't believe in religion. I believe the example of Christ. I believe in the example of a perfect human being that if you can live for other people away from yourself you will be happy. If you live for yourself you will be unhappy and then you will not be able to sleep or do anything else... finally. I think insofar, and I really believe this, insofar as people do live with the other fellow [God] in mind, they have to be happy you know? Because it raises you up.

Not everyone is lucky enough to understand how delicious it is to suffer.

If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting.

Love fattens on smooth words.

The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.

I would have been a terrible mother because I'm basically a very selfish human being. Not that that has stopped most people going off and having children.

Once a crowd chased me for an autograph. "Beat it", I said, "go sit on a tack!" "We made you", they said. "Like hell you did", I told them.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

"Isn't it fun getting older?" is really a terrible fallacy. That's like saying I prefer driving an old car with a flat tire.

Enemies are so stimulating.

I have always lived my life exactly as I wanted. I've tried to please no one but myself... but I'm entirely content. I can sit back in my old age and not regret a single moment, not wish to change a single thing. It's what I wish for you...a life with no regrets.

The time to make up your mind about people is never.

Without discipline, there's no life at all.

If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.

What the hell-you might be right, you might be wrong...but don't just avoid.

I realised long ago that skirts are hopeless. Anytime I hear a man say he prefers a woman in a skirt, I say, 'Try one. Try a skirt.'

If you're given a choice between money and sex appeal, take the money. As you get older, the money will become your sex appeal.

Listen to the song of life.

I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for people.

Cold sober, I find myself absolutely fascinating.

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

The only time I am ever miserable is when I do something just for the money.

I don't care WHAT the say about me, as long as it's not the truth

Friendship, if somebody holds out his hand toward you, you've got to reach and take it... There are too many people alone, and if you're lucky enough for somebody to want you as a friend, it's an obligation.

Life gets harder the smarter you get, the more you know.

What in the world would we do without our libraries?

Few people know what they mean when they say, "I love you." ... Well, what does the word love mean? It means total interest. I think the reason very few people really fall in love with anyone is they're not willing to pay the price. The price is you have to adjust yourself to them.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only what you are expecting to give — which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving.

You learn in life that the only person you can really correct and change is yourself.

If you want to change attitudes, start with a change in behavior.

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.

Silence the artist and you have silenced the most articulate voice the people have.

Nobody owes anybody anything; it's up to each individual to set high standards for himself or herself, and to set about working hard and creating a solid future.

Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and bossy... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind his back.

I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.

The woman's position in the world today is so much harder than a man's that it makes me choke every time I hear a man complain about anything.