Cornelia Otis Skinner Quotes & Sayings

There are compensations for growing older. One is the realization that to be sporting isn't at all necessary. It is a great relief to reach this stage of wisdom. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

It's not that I don't want to be a beauty, that I don't yearn to be dripping with glamour. It's just that I can't see how any woman can find time to do to herself all the things that must apparently be done to make herself beautiful and, having once done them, how anyone without the strength of mind of a foreign missionary can keep up such a regime. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

Courtesy is fine and heaven knows we need more and more of it in a rude and frenetic world, but mechanized courtesy is as pallid as Pablum ... in fact, it isn't even courtesy. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

We all have our little illusions about our own mental abilities. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

Emily and I have now reached the time in life when not only do we lie about our ages, we forget what we've said they are. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

That amenity which the French have developed into a great art ... conversation. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

Woman's virtue is man's greatest invention. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

Public opinion which, to be sure, can at times be helpful, must never for an instant swerve us from what we know in our heart we are trying to convey. For honesty is the great requisite of art. If we remain honest with ourselves, art, which is always there, never lets us down. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

The French have no such expression as 'killing time.' In their more philosophical vocabulary the term is 'passing time,' which means savoring all moments of it each to his individual enjoyment. While we battle with time, they relax with tempo. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbism does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

Mosquitoes were using my ankles as filling stations. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

All I have learned about horses is that they are beautiful overrated creatures and are all born quite insane ... — Cornelia Otis Skinner

Tragedy can break the heart but not the dam of the tearducts while schmaltz can dissolve the most hardened sophisticate. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

It's as though some poor devil were to set out for a large dinner party with the knowledge that the following morning he would be hearing exactly what each of the other guests thought of him. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

I have always fallen for ads. The sweetheart of J. Walter Thompson, I have a peasant-like belief in whatever miracle they profess to effect. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

It is disturbing to discover in oneself these curious revelations of the validity of the Darwinian theory. If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed. — Cornelia Otis Skinner

One learns in life to keep silent and draw one's own confusions. — Cornelia Otis Skinner