Man must speak, then sing, then dance. The speaking is the brain, the thinking man. The singing is the emotion. The dancing is the Dionysian ecstasy which carries away all.
Art is not necessary at all. All that is necessary to make this world a better place to live in is to love – to love as Christ loved, as Buddha loved.
Master technique, so that technique NEVER prevents you from dancing.
The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its own feet.
What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print.
Perhaps he was a bit different from other people, but what really sympathetic person is not a little mad?
To dance is to live. What I want is a school of life.
To express what is the most moral, healthful and beautiful in art this is the mission of the dancer, and to this I dedicate my life.
These people seemed so enwrapped in snobbishness and the glory of being rich that they had no art sense whatever.
My art is just an effort to express the truth of my being in gesture and movement. It has taken me long years to find even one absolutely true movement.
We may not all break the Ten Commandments, but we are certainly all capable of it. Within us lurks the breaker of all laws, ready to spring out at the first real opportunity.
I do not teach children, I give them joy.
To awaken human emotion is the highest level of art.
It is only in romances that people undergo a sudden metamorphosis. In real life, even after the most terrible experiences, the main character remains exactly the same.
All my life I have struggled to make one authentic gesture...
It is the mission of all art to express the highest and most beautiful ideals of man.
I had learned to have a perfect nausea for the theatre: the continual repetition of the same words and the same gestures, night after night, and the caprices, the way of looking at life, and the entire rigmarole disgusted me.
Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and champagne. If people ask me when I began to dance, I reply ‘In my mother’s womb, probably as a result of the oysters and Champagne.’
There are joys so complete, so all perfect, that one should not survive them.
I finally discovered the source of all movement, the unity from which all diversities of movement are born.