Top 140 Bette Davis Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “There’s only one way to work – like hell.”

— Bette Davis

Featured in: Dedication Quotes, Work Ethic Quotes, Commitment Quotes, Efficiency Quotes, Quotes About Work

2. “Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.”

— Bette Davis

Featured in: Breakup Quotes

3. “Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.”

— Bette Davis

4. “If everyone likes you, you’re not doing it right.”

— Bette Davis

5. “Getting old is not for sissies.”

— Bette Davis

6. “The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead.”

— Bette Davis

7. “It’s better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for someone you’re not. It’s a sign of your worth sometimes, if you’re hated by the right people.”

— Bette Davis

8. “There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.”

— Bette Davis

9. “There may be a heaven, but if Joan Crawford is there, I’m not going.”

— Bette Davis

10. “Success is built on disappointment, and disappointment is inherent in all success.”

— Bette Davis

11. “She did it the hard way.”

— Bette Davis

12. “Sex is God’s joke on human beings.”

— Bette Davis

13. “I guess I’m larger than life. That’s my problem.”

— Bette Davis

14. “Being called very, very difficult is the beginning of success. Until you’re called very, very difficult you’re really nobody at all.”

— Bette Davis

15. “It’s true we don’t know what we’ve got until its gone, but we don’t know what we’ve been missing until it arrives. Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.”

— Bette Davis

16. “Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.”

— Bette Davis

17. “Joan Crawford is a movie star. I am an actress.”

— Bette Davis

18. “To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.”

— Bette Davis

19. “I’m the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.”

— Bette Davis

20. “I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.”

— Bette Davis

21. “You should know me well enough by now to know I don’t ask for things I don’t think I can get.”

— Bette Davis

22. “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night! – As Margo Channing in All About Eve.”

— Bette Davis

23. “If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.”

— Bette Davis

24. “In this business, until you’re known as a monster you’re not a star.”

— Bette Davis

25. “Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.”

— Bette Davis

26. “One begins to realize that one is getting old when the birthday candles weigh more than the cake.”

— Bette Davis

27. “I think I’ll have a large order of prognosis negative.”

— Bette Davis

28. “I firmly believe, however, that if your children have never hated you, you have failed as a parent.”

— Bette Davis

29. “Everybody has a heart. Except some people.”

— Bette Davis

30. “You know what I’m going to have on my gravestone? ‘She did it the hard way.’”

— Bette Davis

31. “Success only breeds a new goal.”

— Bette Davis

32. “Pray to God and say the lines.”

— Bette Davis

33. “I work to stay alive.”

— Bette Davis

34. “I am just too much.”

— Bette Davis

35. “She’s the original good time who was had by all.”

— Bette Davis

36. “The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

— Bette Davis

37. “The secret of marriage is: separate bedrooms and separate bathrooms.”

— Bette Davis

38. “Yes, burn your bridges.”

— Bette Davis

39. “I was thought to be ‘stuck up.’ I wasn’t. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure.”

— Bette Davis

40. “From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.”

— Bette Davis

41. “You can lose everything but you can’t lose your talent!”

— Bette Davis

42. “There is a certain ecstasy in wanting things you can’t get.”

— Bette Davis

43. “The male ego with few exceptions is elephantine to start with.”

— Bette Davis

44. “I want to die with my high heels on, still in action.”

— Bette Davis

45. “Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone- but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, to yielding.”

— Bette Davis

46. “It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies.”

— Bette Davis

47. “I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.”

— Bette Davis

48. “The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God’s joke on humanity. It is man’s last desperate stand at superintendency.”

— Bette Davis

49. “I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed.”

— Bette Davis

50. “My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.”

— Bette Davis