Nellie Melba's Quotes

Always sing below your potential.

Do everything yourself.

If I'd been a housemaid I'd have been the best in Australia - I couldn't help it. It's got to be perfection for me.

One of the drawbacks of fame is that one can never escape from it.

The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself.

Things are coming to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade private life.

It wounds a man less to confess that he has failed in any pursuit through idleness, neglect, the love of pleasure, etc., etc., which are his own faults, than through incapacity and unfitness, which are the faults of his nature.

My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.

A doctrinaire is a fool but an honest man.

I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.

It is not much matter which we say, but mind, we must all say the same.

Nobody ever did anything very foolish except from some strong principle.

Once is orthodox, twice is puritanical.

That is no use at all. What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.