Top 50 Ethel Merman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Be yourself – it’s the one thing you can do better than anyone else.”

— Ethel Merman

2. “Everything’s coming up roses – for me.”

— Ethel Merman

3. “Now what kind of an attitude is that, ‘These things happen?’ They only happen because this whole country is just full of people who, when these things happen, they just say, ‘These things happen,’ and that’s why they happen! We gotta have control of what happens to us.”

— Ethel Merman

4. “You’ll never prove you’re too good for a job by not doing your best.”

— Ethel Merman

5. “Legend has it that when God created me, he gave me a big distinctive voice, a lot of boldness and no heart.”

— Ethel Merman

6. “I work as often as I want and yet I’m free as a bird.”

— Ethel Merman

7. “Always give them the old fire, even when you feel like a squashed cake of ice.”

— Ethel Merman

8. “In my case, things have pretty much been handed to me.”

— Ethel Merman

9. “My father taught me to read music and play the piano-but not well, even though people have said that I’m a natural musician.”

— Ethel Merman

10. “I wouldn’t trust any man as far as you can throw a piano.”

— Ethel Merman

11. “I’ve made a wonderful living playing that theatrical character – the professional brassy dame.”

— Ethel Merman

12. “I can never remember being afraid of an audience. If the audience could do better, they’d be up here on stage and I’d be out there watching them.”

— Ethel Merman

13. “When you are in deep conflict about something, sometimes the most trivial thing can tip the scales.”

— Ethel Merman

14. “Of my four marriages, the one to Bob Levitt is the only one I don’t regret.”

— Ethel Merman

15. “If I feel in need of sleep, I just open a book or turn on the television. Both are better than any sleeping pill.”

— Ethel Merman

16. “I take a breath when I have to.”

— Ethel Merman

17. “At one time I smoked, but in 1959 I couldn’t think of anything else to give up for Lent so I stopped – and I haven’t had a cigarette since.”

— Ethel Merman

18. “I can hold a note as long as the Chase National Bank.”

— Ethel Merman

19. “There have been people who have tried to take advantage of me. They want to be linked to me just because I’m Ethel Merman.”

— Ethel Merman

20. “I am known to be able to take care of myself when I become angry. I don’t mince words.”

— Ethel Merman

21. “I’ve never suffered stage fright. That fascinates people.”

— Ethel Merman

22. “Eisenhower was my war hero and the President I admire and respect most.”

— Ethel Merman

23. “I mentioned that I was thinking of getting out of the business after Call Me Madam. I thought maybe I should become a homebody.”

— Ethel Merman

24. “At a flea market I always head for the junk jewelry table first.”

— Ethel Merman

25. “Once I had all the attention, all I had to do was deliver.”

— Ethel Merman

26. “I’ve never cooked. I can’t do much more in the kitchen than make a cup of tea and some toast.”

— Ethel Merman

27. “My beloved Mom and Pop always rated tops with each other, and that’s the way it will always be.”

— Ethel Merman

28. “My career at Warner Brothers consisted of one musical short subject. I was running around in a bear skin. Very chic.”

— Ethel Merman

29. “I’ll pat myself on the back and admit I have talent. Beyond that, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

— Ethel Merman

30. “I wouldn’t change one thing about my professional life, and I make it a point not to dwell on my mistakes.”

— Ethel Merman

31. “Mom and Pop were proud of my popularity, but from their point of view, show business was no way to make a living.”

— Ethel Merman

32. “Cole Porter wrote Anything Goes and four more hits for me.”

— Ethel Merman

33. “I have plenty of invitations to go places, lots to do. If I’m not working, I go to have my hair taken care of and work at needlepoint.”

— Ethel Merman

34. “Christmas carols always brought tears to my eyes. I also cry at weddings. I should have cried at a couple of my own.”

— Ethel Merman

35. “I preferred delivering my performance in person. I liked to be in control. You couldn’t be in films.”

— Ethel Merman

36. “I was lucky enough to have the songs in my first show written by George and Ira Gershwin. Then Cole Porter wrote five shows for me.”

— Ethel Merman

37. “I’ll admit – I was honored to be on the cover of Time.”

— Ethel Merman

38. “I wasn’t straining at the bit to become a movie star any more than I had plotted to get out of vaudeville and into Broadway musicals.”

— Ethel Merman

39. “Broadway has been very good to me. But then, I’ve been very good to broadway.”

— Ethel Merman

40. “I don’t like to read. The only things I read are gossip columns. If someone gives me a book, it had better have lots of pictures.”

— Ethel Merman

41. “The slapdash way producers used to assemble a show seems a little unbelievable when we talk about them now.”

— Ethel Merman

42. “Who’s happy these days?”

— Ethel Merman

43. “Mom claimed that I could carry a tune at 2 or 3 years of age. Maybe she was a little prejudiced.”

— Ethel Merman

44. “There’s such a thing as theater discipline. One player doesn’t appropriate another’s inventions.”

— Ethel Merman

45. “Any audience that gets a laugh out of me gets it while I’m facing them.”

— Ethel Merman

46. “I have been ambitious to be a somebody from the time I was 5 years old.”

— Ethel Merman

47. “I attend surprisingly few shows. The type of theater that is popular today just doesn’t appeal to me.”

— Ethel Merman

48. “Cole Porter had a worldwide reputation as a sophisticate and hedonist.”

— Ethel Merman

49. “As far as dramas are concerned, it’s considered passe for playwrights to turn out anything the average person can understand.”

— Ethel Merman

50. “When I’m asked how to succeed in show business, I always say I haven’t the foggiest.”

— Ethel Merman