Elsie De Wolfe Quotes & Sayings

The cardinal virtue of all beauty is restraint. — Elsie De Wolfe

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

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

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. — Elsie De Wolfe

A house should be a synthesis of comfort, practicality, and tradition. — Elsie De Wolfe

Simplicity, suitability and proportion. — Elsie De Wolfe

You will express yourself in your house whether you want to or not. — Elsie De Wolfe

Good dressing is largely a question of detail and accessories. — Elsie De Wolfe

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. — Elsie De Wolfe

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. — Elsie De Wolfe

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. — Elsie De Wolfe

I opened the doors and windows of America, and let the air and sunshine in. — Elsie De Wolfe

No one chair should be isolated ... — Elsie De Wolfe

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. — Elsie De Wolfe

Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you. — Elsie De Wolfe

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

I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint. — Elsie De Wolfe

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. — Elsie De Wolfe

My business is to preach to you the beauty of suitability. — Elsie De Wolfe

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

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

It is not chic to be too chic. — Elsie De Wolfe

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

When one begins to think of oneself as growing old, one is already old. — Elsie De Wolfe

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. — Elsie De Wolfe

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. — Elsie De Wolfe

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

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

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

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

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. — Elsie De Wolfe

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. — Elsie De Wolfe

I believe in optimism & plenty of white paint. — Elsie De Wolfe

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

Eating outdoors makes for good health and long life and good temper, everyone knows that. — Elsie De Wolfe

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. — Elsie De Wolfe

The smallest part is worthy of the whole. — Elsie De Wolfe