Elsa Maxwell Quotes

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

Good manners - the longer I live the more convinced I am of it - are a priceless insurance against failure and loneliness. And anyone can have them.

Existence is a party. You join after its started and you leave before its finished.

Under pressure, people admit to murder, setting fire to the village church or robbing a bank, but never to being bores.

Intolerance of mediocrity has been the main prop of my independence.

Nothing spoils a good party like a genius.

Protocol may be defined as the code of etiquette which protects royalty from the competition of intellectual and social superiors.

A bore is a vacuum cleaner of society, sucking up everything and giving nothing. Bores are always eager to be seen talking to you.

Bores put you in a mental cemetery while you are still walking.

The cocktail party is easily the worst invention since castor oil

To get fifty people to a cocktail party in New York, you ask one hundred. In Hollywood, you invite twenty.

I make enemies deliberately. They are the sauce piquante to my dish of life.

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

Someone said that life is a party. You join in after it's started and leave before it's finished.

Only those who have earned leisure know how to use it profitably.

Serve the dinner backward, do anything - but for goodness sake, do something weird.

Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can.

Keep your talent in the dark and you'll never be insulted.

Good manners spring from just one thing - kind impulses.

Down with boredom. It has to go.

Etiquette-a fancy word for simple kindness.

I don't hate anyone. I dislike. But my dislike is the equivalent of anyone else's hate.

Most rich people are the poorest people I know.