Elsie de Wolfe Quotes

There never has been a house so bad that it couldn't be made over into something worthwhile.

Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you.

I was born with the courage to live. Only those are unwise who have never dared to be fools.

No one chair should be isolated.

This is the age of the apartment. Not only in the great cities, but in the smaller centers of civilization the apartment has come to stay. ... A decade ago the apartment was considered a sorry makeshift in America, though it has been successful abroad for more years than you would believe.

When one begins to think of oneself as growing old, one is already old.

I am going in now for interior decoration. By that I mean supplying objets d'art and giving advice regarding the decoration of their houses to wealthy persons who do not have the time, inclination, nor culture to do such work for themselves. It is nothing new. Women have done the same thing before.

Never, under any circumstance, do I touch soup, as I do not believe in building a meal on a lake.

Eating outdoors makes for good health and long life and good temper, everyone knows that.

No, I don't take soup. You can't build a meal on a lake.

[At first sight of the Acropolis:] It's beige! My color!

Good dressing is largely a question of detail and accessories.

It is not chic to be too chic.

You can't take it with you. There are no pockets in a shroud.

The cardinal virtue of all beauty is restraint.

I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint.

You will express yourself in your house whether you want to or not.

I believe in optimism & plenty of white paint.

It does not matter whether one paints a picture, writes a poem, or carves a statue - simplicity is the mark of a master-hand.

What is the goal? A house that is like the life that goes with it, a house that gives us beauty as we understand it- and beauty of a nobler kind that we may grow to understand.

I opened the doors and windows of America, and let the air and sunshine in.

I was not ugly. I might never be anything for men to lose their heads about, but I need never again be ugly. This knowledge was like a song within me. Suddenly it all came together. If you were healthy, fit, and well-dressed, you could be attractive.

My business is to preach to you the beauty of suitability.

It is the personality of the mistress that the home expresses. Men are forever guests in our homes, no matter how much happiness they may find there.

We cannot do better than to accept the standards of other times, and to adapt them to our uses.

the smallest part is worthy of the whole.

A house should be a synthesis of comfort, practicality, and tradition.

When I am no longer being copied, I shall know that I am a back number. ... the fear of being copied is often the characteristic of the meager imagination.

Light, air and comfort - these three things I must always have in a room.

don't make each room a different color in a small apartment or you'll make yourself nervous.

I know of nothing more significant than the awakening of men and women throughout our country to the desire to improve their houses. Call it what you will - awakening, development, American Renaissance - it is a most startling and promising condition of affairs.

To conform within rational limits to a given style is no more servile than to pay one's taxes or to write according to the rule of grammar.

I am going to make everything around me beautiful - that will be my life.

a woman of the world should always be the mistress of sorrow and not its servant. She may have a grief but never a grievance.

I can't paint. I can't write. I can't sing. But I can decorate and run a house, and light it, and heat it, and have it like a living thing.

You will soon find that your joy in your home is growing, and that you have a source of happiness within yourself that you had not suspected.

Simplicity, suitability and proportion.