Jane Seymour quotes: insight and life lessons from the actress.
“You have to count on living every single day in a way you believe will make you feel good about your life… so that if it were over tomorrow, you’d be content with yourself.”
“When I was younger, I remember thinking, ‘I have to pass this mark’ or ‘I have to get this role’ or ‘I have to do this or that’ and then that will mean I have accomplished something. But life is actually all about the process and not about the goals.”
“If you want something badly enough, make an attempt. If you want to paint, get a brush and do it. If you want to sing, sing. A lot of people get scared. They’re afraid to fail. Take that word out of your vocabulary. You don’t fail. You’ve ‘tried your best.'”
“See the gift that change delivers.”
“My father always told me, ‘You can only be your own best.’ In other words, if you feel you’ve done your best, you’ve done well enough.”
“You cannot do everything at once, so find people you trust to help you. And don’t be afraid to say no.”
“I don’t waste any time at all. I have no time at all for people who are being very negative or people who are very whiny or people who feel sorry for themselves. I tend to go to them and just say, ‘You don’t understand how incredible life is and how precious it is.'”
“Being creative is my idea of heaven. I’m just incredibly fortunate that I can do it in artwork.”
“I learn my lines while on the golf course. I try to do two or three things at once. I have ideas for books all the time, I have ideas for paintings all the time, and I write them all down. I take my sketchpad and my iPad, which I design on, and I do sit down and do specific tasks at specific times.”
“Even though I make those movies, I find myself wishing that more of those magic moments could happen in real life.”
“Golf is like acting in that both require concentration and relaxation at the same time. In acting, you can’t push emotion. You have to let it rise from you naturally. Same thing in golf. You have to have a plan and a focus; but then you need to just let it happen and enjoy the smooth movement of the swing.”
“People say, ‘You’re like a phoenix.’ No, I just had a strong role model in my mother, everyone will have challenges. Your natural instinct is to close up your heart and let it eat you up. Do something to help someone else. It will heal you. You’ll be like a magnet when you do that. Light to firefly.”
“When I was growing up, my mother, who had been through a lot of terrible things in life, taught me that when life is tough your instinct is to close your heart. But if you can accept what happened and reach out to someone, there will always be someone less fortunate, or someone that can bring a solution and help your life. She always told me to live with an open heart: when life gets tough, you should go out and help someone else. I spend my afternoons painting and working on my Open Hearts jewelry line for Kay Jewelers. I designed an image of a heart that isn’t completely closed.”
“If your heart is open it can never stay broken.”
“And I always think of life like a giant wave. You know, it rises and it crests and it flies, and it’s just magnificent, and then it crashes. And for a lot of people, when it crashes, that’s the end, and they go down the deep, dark hole of depression.”
“In life, when stuff happens the instinct is to close off your heart. By leaving your heart open, it leaves room for someone else to come in.”
“I spend as much time as I possibly can doing things for other people, if I can. If I see a need and I feel that I can help, I do it. I work a great deal in terms of charities and things.”
“The simplest act can change the world growing up in a cold and distant family. I have struggled my entire life with letting people into my life and my heart. I wake up each morning telling myself to do one small act of kindness for another person. I have seen how even the simplest act can change someone’s day. If all I can give that day is a smile, that is enough. When we are feeling at our worst, nothing can make us feel better than trying to make someone else feel better.”
“The best gift you can give someone is a part of your soul.”
“What I know now is that we’re all interconnected and that’s a really beautiful thing. We have links to everyone else in our lives and in the world. Different people have different journeys for different reasons. You can’t judge, but you can celebrate that there are connections everywhere.”
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty (Gandhi).”
“We must teach the next generation to not just learn languages, but whole cultures and belief systems. We will then make more of an effort to understand people and their different cultures.”
“Beauty is a radiance that originates from within and comes from inner security and strong character.”
“If somebody believes that a certain practice will get them to heaven, and then other people believe a different way of doing it, I think it’s their choice.”
“This is something I consider enlightenment to be—and that is to give intellectual or spiritual understanding and to be free of ignorance, false beliefs or prejudice. Able to honor each person as they walk their own path and not infringe our own personal beliefs onto them but to accept whatever form that carries truth for them.”
“I believe that there is some spiritual entity that’s greater than us. I do not belong to any specific organized religion. I have always believed that, and I believe it even more so now. I believe that someone was listening to me, and someone is giving me an incredibly blessed life.”
“I have many friends who do not believe in luck; they believe in blessings. Likewise, I do not believe in coincidences; I believe in miracles.”
“I know that the purpose of life is to understand and be in the present moment with the people you love. It’s just that simple.”
“Once you love someone, you always love them. You may not be married or to be in a relationship for a long time, but the relationship you had was valuable, and then it becomes something else, if you’re fortunate. You can figure out how to have a different type of relationship.”
“Every child is different, and there’s no handbook on it. Each child is unique and special, and the advice I’d give is to hear them—really listen—even if you don’t agree.”
“I’m the best mum I know how to be. I think it’s all about listening to your children, communicating, and caring enough to be involved in their life.”
“Motherhood has relaxed me in many ways. You learn to deal with crisis. I’ve become a juggler, I suppose. It’s all a big circus, and nobody who knows me believes I can manage, but sometimes I do.”
“You want your children to be best at this and that and to fit into the box, but not every child is supposed to go to college, be good at math, or whatever. I never went to college, but I got to testify at congress… so there ya go. You find your own place. Good parenting is helping your child find their strengths versus focusing on what they’re not doing as well as someone else.”
“Being a grandparent is fantastic because you get to borrow the children for an intense amount of time, and then you get to hand them right back.”
“The family is inclusive of not just your genetic family, but the people that you meet along the way.”
“It never occurred to me to take care of myself. Only recently did I suddenly stop when someone asked me, ‘What do you want for you?’ I had never asked myself that question. But, by the same token, I’m incredibly grateful for all the choices I’ve made. I got a career, I had a family. I could have done without some of the divorces and financial stuff that happened, but for the most part, I’d say I’ve had an amazing experience. And, I really appreciate life. If you don’t have downs, you can’t have ups. The great thing about having a family is that you have them forever.”
“People treat life as though it’s the dress rehearsal for some big show. It’s not. This is it.”
“It’s really not a question of how long you have on this earth; it’s about what you do with it.”
“Live each day the fullest you can, not guaranteeing there’ll be a tomorrow, not dwelling endlessly on yesterday.”
“At the end of the day, I let myself have a glass of wine.”
