Margot Fonteyn Quotes

Margot Fonteyn delivers lyrical thoughts on magic, chance, and fleeting beauty, perfect for anyone who loves wonder.

24 quotes

1. Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.

2. Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

3. If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?

4. Life offstage has sometimes been a wilderness of unpredictables in an unchoreographed world.

5. Minor things can become moments of great revelation when encountered for the first time.

6. The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

7. What a beautiful step! I shall never be able to do it.

8. How to put something so visual, so potent with theatrical moment that even film cannot capture it, into plain words? How to explain why it is that when, to a particular strain of music, an ordinary mortal steps forward on one leg, raises the other behind her and lifts her arms above her head, the angels hold their breath? ~ Meredith Daneman

9. The world of dance is a natural world from which civilization has divorced many of us by making it appear remote - something reserved for the few who have a special talent.

10. Dancing was something to be taken very seriously when engaged in and otherwise put out of mind.

11. I have never wanted to live to be old, so old I'd run out of friends or money.

12. Take your work seriously, but never yourself.

13. I’ve found the perfect partner.

14. Jumping for joy' is a very basic human reaction, and a child skipping down the street is simply an untrained dancer.

15. The world of dance is a charmed place. Some people like to inhabit it, others to behold it; either way it is rewarding.

16. Dancers are both athletes and artists.

17. Ballet is more than a profession - it is a way of life.

18. There is no way anything of value can be done without some framework. It might well be that the framework is discarded or the rules opposed; that is not important. What is essential is that they exist so that one knows when one is in opposition to them.

19. Traveling carries with it the curse of being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, for wherever one is some part of oneself remains on another continent.

20. The essential thing about mothers is that one needs to know that they are there, particularly at that age when, paradoxically, one is trying so hard to break away from parental influence.

21. the first night is the worst possible time to make a hard and fast criticism: the baby never looks its best on the day it is born.

22. generally speaking, we are all happier when we are still striving for achievement than when the prize is in our hands.

23. Genius is another word for magic.

24. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.