Best quotes by Lucille Ball

HappinessChildren internalize their parents' unhappiness. Fortunately, they absorb our contentment just as readily.

I never thought I was funny. I don't THINK funny.

I will never do another TV series. It couldn't top I Love Lucy, and I'd be foolish to try. In this business, you have to know when to get off.

I regret the passing of the studio system. I was very appreciative of it because I had no talent.

Television is the quickest form of recognition in the world.

My ideal of womanhood has always been the pioneer woman who fought and worked at her husband's side. She bore the children, kept the home fires burning; she was the hub of the family, the planner and the dreamer.

I'm sometimes scared of everything that has happened to us. We didn't think Desilu Productions would grow so big. We merely wanted to be together and have two children.

Women's Lib? Oh, I'm afraid it doesn't interest me one bit. I've been so liberated it hurts.

When you're too mad and too rattled to see straight, you're bound to make mistakes. You can't go on and on for years being miserable about a situation and not have it change you. You get so you can't stand yourself.

You see much more of your children once they leave home.

I am not funny. The writers were funny. My directors were funny. The situations were funny… What I am is brave. I have never been scared. Not when I did movies, certainly not when I was a model and not when I did I Love Lucy.

Use a make-up table with everything close at hand and don't rush; otherwise you'll look like a patchwork quilt.

How I Love Lucy was born? We decided that instead of divorce lawyers profiting from our mistakes, we'd profit from them.

Here's what I advise any young struggling actress today: The important thing is to develop as a woman first, and a performer second. You wouldn't prostitute yourself to get a part, not if you're in the right mind. You won't be happy, whatever you do, unless you're comfortable with your own conscience.

I am a real ham. I love an audience. I work better with an audience. I am dead, in fact, without one.

I hate failure and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes. It was the worst period of my life. Neither Desi nor I have been the same since, physically or mentally.

People either have comedy or they don't. You can't teach it to them.

Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.

Knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste.

I don't suppose that hard work, discipline, and a perfectionist attitude toward my work did me any harm. They are a big part of my makeup today, as any of my co-workers will tell you. And when life seemed unbearable, I learned to live in my imagination, and to step inside other people's skins- indispensable abilities for an actress.

I was shy for several years in my early days in Hollywood until I figured out that no one really gave a damn if I was shy or not, and I got over my shyness.

Some of the most gifted people I've ever met or read about are homosexual. How can you knock it?

There's a great deal of difference between temperament and temper. Temperament is something you welcome creatively, for it is based on sensitivity, empathy, awareness ... but a bad temper takes too much out of you and doesn't really accomplish anything.

Love yourself first and the rest of your life will fall into place.

Ability is of little account without opportunity.

It wasn't love at first sight. It took a full five minutes.

It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.

Love yourself first and everything falls into line.

I'm not funny. What I am is brave.

I'm happy that I have brought laughter because I have been shown by many the value of it in so many lives, in so many ways.

Luck? Luck is hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.

Whether we're prepared or not, life has a habit of thrusting situations upon us.

I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.

If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.

Responsibility is the ability to respond.

In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.

Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead.

I cured myself of shyness when it finally occurred to me that people didn't think about me half as much as I gave them credit for. The truth was, nobody gave a damn. Like most teenagers, I was far too self-centered. When I stopped being prisoner to what I worried was others’ opinions of me, I became more confident and free.

Now get the hell out of here and go change the world.

The more things you do, the more things you can do.

A man who correctly guesses a woman`s age may be smart, but he's not very bright.

I would rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.

remember to recognize the small successes that you will have. Don't let the brightness of that big goal blind you to what happens on the way toward the goal. Meet one wave at a time and enjoy what progress you make. I want you please not to be taken up in the undertow of pessimism.

I believe that we're as happy in life as we make up our minds to be.

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.