Neve Campbell
Actress
"Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started."
Ballet quotes
Ballet
347 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Martha Graham
Dancer, choreographer
"A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance."
Thomas A. Edison
Inventor
"A genius is a talented person who does his homework."
William Wordsworth
Poet
"Ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance."
Alain LeRoy Locke
Philosopher, Educator
"We must never forget that the dance is the cradle of Negro music."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside ballet — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Ballet quotes (page 1 of 18)
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"Dancing is the body made poetic."
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"Ballet is completely unnatural to the body, just being turned out... it's not the way your body is supposed to function, so you actually [...] train your body to be a different structure than you were born with."
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"The purpose of art is higher than art. What we are really interested in are masterpieces of humanity."
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"The artistic path is a fearless occupation."
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"If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat."
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"To change the world, you must first change yourself. And baby, that's hard enough."
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"Be IN it. Get drunk in the moment."
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"Ballet: men wearing pants so tight that you can tell what religion they are."
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"There's an opera out on the turnpike, there's a ballet being fought out in the alley."
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"I don’t understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses."
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"You can't drink on an eight hour flight, pass out, and then go onstage... well you can, but then you're Spandau Ballet."
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"We should realize in a vivid and revolutionary sense that we are not in our bodies but our bodies are in us."
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"One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet's curtain calls is the Royal Ballet's dancing."
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"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?"
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"Without dancing you can never attain a perfectly graceful carriage, which is of the highest importance in life."
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"I was used to dancing, but only when someone told you what to do. So in the nightclub I was all over the place, I combined everything. Street dance, modern dance, a bit of jazz and ballet, I was Twyla Tharp, I was Alvin Ailey, I was Michael Jackson. I didn't care, I was free."
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"There's no similarity between football and ballet, so this ain't ballet music being played on the field. I'm pumping something that's going to put me in a frame of mind to go to war, and something that's very high tempo and high beat."
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"The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body. I don't leap and jump anymore. I look at young dancers, and I am envious, more aware of what glories the body contains. But sensitivity is not made dull by age."
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"Don't you think you're quite young?' 'I'm twenty-one,' said Brida. 'If I wanted to start learning ballet, I'd be conseidered too old."
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"It is not a question of who dances but of who or what does not dance."
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