Elsie De Wolfe Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I believe in optimism & plenty of white paint.

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

No one chair should be isolated ...

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

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

Good dressing is largely a question of detail and accessories.

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

It is not chic to be too chic.

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

The cardinal virtue of all beauty is restraint.

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.

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.

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

Simplicity, suitability and proportion.

The smallest part is worthy of the whole.

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

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

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

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

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 believe in plenty of optimism and white paint.

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

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