- When you become the character you portray, it's the end of your career as an actor.
- Never regret anything you have done with a sincere affection; nothing is lost that is born of the heart.
- [on how he was awarded his Military Cross] All I did, old man, was disguise myself as a tree--that's correct, a tree--and cross no man's land to gather a bit of information from the German lines. I have not since been called upon to play a tree.
- [from a private letter written when he was serving in World War I] Out here, we step over death every day. We stand next to it while we drink our tea. It's commonplace and ordinary. People who had lives and tried to hold on to them and didn't, and now slump and stare and melt slowly to nothing. You meet their eyes, or what used to be their eyes and you feel ashamed. And now Johnny is one of them. That's an end of it. Grieving is only ridiculous in this place. It could be me today or tomorrow and I shouldn't want anyone to bother grieving over that.
- Sometimes I just crave to play in [William Shakespeare (I)] again and I know and love playing Orlando so much.
- I was so badly typed that when I went back to New York I lost my own identity. On the street no one ever said 'Good morning, Basil,' or 'Good morning, Mr. Rathbone.' They said 'Good morning, Sherlock.'
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