What is a bore? Maxwell definition: a vacuum cleaner of society, sucking up everything and giving nothing. How do you spot one? Bores are always anxious to be seen talking to you.

Giving parties is a trivial avocation, but it pays the dues for my union card in humanity.

Fight fire with fire. If you must have bores, always put them together or at the same table ... bores have an effervescent chemical reaction on one another at a party. They invariably have a marvelous time trading banalities in the absence of competition. Clichés roll trippingly off the tongue like sparkling epigrams and trite observations acquire depth sinking into receptive minds.

Seeing unhappiness in the marriage of friends, I was content to have chosen music and laughter as a substitute for a husband.

Most rich people are the poorest people I know.

[On the British Museum:] It was manifestly impossible to read all the books in that huge, gloomy structure, but I made a good try and accumulated a fund of useless information guaranteed to cast a pall over any dinner table.

Anatomize the character of a successful hostess and the knife will lay bare the fact that she owes her position to one of three things: either she is liked, or she is feared, or she is important.