Elsie de Wolfe Quotes

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

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

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

Simplicity, suitability and proportion.

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

I believe in optimism & plenty of white paint.

The cardinal virtue of all beauty is restraint.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

It is not chic to be too chic.

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.

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

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.

Good dressing is largely a question of detail and accessories.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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