Charlie Chaplin Quotes

“Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.”

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

We think too much and feel too little.

I always like walking in the rain, so no one can see me crying.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world – not even our troubles.

You’ll never find a rainbow if you’re looking down.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

Simplicity is a difficult thing to achieve.

Imagination means nothing without doing.

Let us strive for the impossible. The great achievements throughout history have been the conquest of what seemed the impossible.

A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

Perfect love is the most beautiful of all frustrations because it is more than one can express.

I am a citizen of the world.

We think too much and feel too little.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world – not even our troubles.

I hope we shall abolish war and settle all differences at the conference table.

If you’re really truthful with yourself, it’s a wonderful guidance.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life – doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

The deeper the truth in a creative work, the longer it will live.

The deeper the truth in a creative work, the longer it will live.

What a sad business, being funny.

We must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature — or go insane.

Simplicity of approach is always best.

What do you want meaning for? Life is desire, not meaning!

In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that.

The world is not composed of heroes and villains, but of men and women with all the passions that God has given them. The ignorant condemn, but the wise pity.

Whomever lives, gambles with life.

All artists experience a lull in their work. It is a period of replenishing the soil – of plowing in and turning under our past experiences and watering them afresh with new ones.

Over the years I have discovered that ideas come through an intense desire for them; continually desiring, the mind becomes a watch-tower on the look-out for incidents that may excite the imagination – music, a sunset, may give image to an idea.

The persecution of any minority is inhuman and unnatural. That belief is timeless and beyond change.

How does one get ideas? By sheer perseverance to the point of madness.

Beauty is the spirit of all things, an exaltation, a psalm of life and death, of good and evil, of vileness and purity, of joy and pain, of hate and love—all of it incarnate in the object we see or hear. It is an empathy, a feeling into art or nature that we observe—all of it a singing harmony to our senses.

Beauty is the spirit of all things, an exaltation, a psalm of life and death, of good and evil, of vileness and purity, of joy and pain, of hate and love—all of it incarnate in the object we see or hear. It is an empathy, a feeling into art or nature that we observe—all of it a singing harmony to our senses.

My happiest days are those in which I do good work.

I hope that the entertainment I give has some lasting effect on people. I hope they see the beauty that I myself am seeking. I am trying to express a beauty that embraces not only physical characteristics and scenes, but the true fundamental emotions of humanity. Beauty. Beauty is what I am after.

Making fun is serious business. It calls for deep study, for concentrated observation. It is the business of a funny man to know what makes people laugh and why it makes them laugh. He must be a psychologist before he can become a successful comedian.

Too much kindness and respect are given to the unseen and not enough to humanity. It seems that in our nature we loathe each other and bestow our respect and love on the abstract.

That which is apparent ends. That which is subtle is never-ending.

In the realm of the unknown there is an infinite power for good.

A man’s true character comes out when he’s drunk.

Art was an additional emotion applied to skillful technique.

A man is what a woman makes him and a woman makes herself.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

I am what I am: an individual, unique and different.

I have yet to know a poor man who has nostalgia for poverty.

Life and death are too resolute, too implacable to be accidental.

I neither believe nor disbelieve anything.

Faith is a precursor of all our ideas.

I’ve arrived at the age where a platonic friendship can be sustained on the highest moral plane.

I’m an old sinner. Nothing shocks me.

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.

I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat…Everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.