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I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman.

Laurence Olivier

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Laurence Olivier
Age: 82 †
Born: 1907
Born: May 22
Died: 1989
Died: July 11
Actor
Character Actor
Director
Dramaturge
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Politician
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Dorking
Surrey
Baron Olivier of Brighton
The Lord Olivier
Anything
Workmen
Better
Diligent
Think
Expert
Thinking
Shakespeare
Life
Experts
Like
Poet
People
Wisdom
Remember
Workman

More quotes by Laurence Olivier

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The art of persuasion. The actor persuades himself, first, and through himself, the audience.
Laurence Olivier
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I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.
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I believe in the theater I believe in it as the first glamorizer of thought. It restores dramatic dynamics and their relations to life size.
Laurence Olivier
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If he was lost for a moment, he would dive straight back into its honey.
Laurence Olivier
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Art is a little bit larger than life - it's an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness.
Laurence Olivier
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The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass.
Laurence Olivier
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Autograph-hunting is the most unattractive manifestation of sex-starved curiosity.
Laurence Olivier
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What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying?
Laurence Olivier
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We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.
Laurence Olivier
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I'm rather bored by the subject - meaning me. It's a sort of a yoke, but at times you know, a yoke is a kind of comfort. And it's always there.
Laurence Olivier
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I am far from sure when I am acting and when I am not or, should I more frankly put it, when I am lying and when I am not. For what is acting but lying and what is good acting but convincing lying?
Laurence Olivier
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You must have - besides intuition and sensitivity - a cutting edge that allows you to reach what you need. Also, you have to know life - bastards included - and it takes a bit of one to know one, don't you think?
Laurence Olivier
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Work is life for me, it is the only point of life - and with it there is almost religious belief that service is everything.
Laurence Olivier
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Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word.
Laurence Olivier
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My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.
Laurence Olivier
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Scratch an actor and you'll find an actor.
Laurence Olivier
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[May 1958, on playing Macbeth at age 30 and age 48] When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
Laurence Olivier
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In spite of a heavy disguise, a few days' growth on my face, dark glasses, a beret and one of William's jackets that fitted me not at all, as I emerged from a hotel in Lecce, a young fisherman pointed me out to his friends and said Lavrenche Olivaire. It was not all that amazing if you're not known in Italy, you're not known anywhere.
Laurence Olivier
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If you're an artist, you've got to prove it.
Laurence Olivier
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We used to have actresses trying to become stars now we have stars trying to become actresses.
Laurence Olivier