Elsie Quotes & Sayings

If the ghost that haunts the towns of Ypres and Arras and Albert is the staturory British Tommy, slogging with rifle and pack through its ruined streets to this well-documented destiny 'up the line', then the ghost of Boulogne and Etaples and Rouen ought to be a girl. She's called Elsie or Gladys or Dorothy, her ankles are swollen, her feet are aching, her hands reddened and rough. She has little money, no vote, and has almost forgotten what it feels like to be really warm. She sleeps in a tent. Unless she has told a diplomatic lie about her age, she is twenty-three. She is the daughter of a clergyman, a lawyer or a prosperous businessman, and has been privately educated and groomed to be a 'lady'. She wears the unbecoming outdoor uniform of a VAD or an army nurse. She is on active service, and as much a part of the war as Tommy Atkins. — Lyn Macdonald

Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began in a great hurry; 'and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well
' 'What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking. — Lewis Carroll

Constance: Tell me, what happened to William's little maid? I never saw her again after that dinner.
Mary Maceachran: Elsie?
She's gone.
Constance: Oh, it's a pity, really. I thought it was a good idea to have someone in the house who is actually sorry he's dead. — Julian Fellowes

I know this guy. All his life he loved this girl who was perfect in every way but just when he finally convinced her to be his and they're deliriously happy, he went and messed everything up.
Henry to Elsie-book 5 — June Gray

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

Elsie eyed him puzzledly, and then offered, Would you like to see my plate? — Naomi Novik

Once when my father-in-law was leaving the house after lunch to return to the field to work, my mother-in-law said, 'Albert, you get right back in here and tell me you love me.' He grinned and jokingly said, 'Elsie, when we were married, I told you I loved you, and if that ever changes, I'll let you know.' It's hard to overuse the expression, 'I love you.' Use it daily. — Joe J. Christensen

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

An 'usband should be plain enough to sit at his settle, and simple-minded enough to accept the stew on his plate, rather than looking round ev'ry corner for a more succulent chop,' declares Elsie. — Emmanuelle De Maupassant

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

In other words, more than seventy per cent of American divorces are granted because husbands and wives can not adapt themselves to each other in the matter of how they shall spend their LEISURE hours. — Elsie Lincoln Benedict

Now is as good a time as any to send up a prayer. — Elsie Hillman-Gordon

I was born Gaynor Hopkins, one of seven children. My mum, Elsie, and dad, Glyndwr, always said they had seven children, although my sister Paulene was stillborn. — Bonnie Tyler

Minds me of a story they tell about Willy Feeley when he was a young fella. Willy was bashful, awful bashful. Well, one day he takes a heifer over to Graves' bull. Ever'body was out but Elsie Graves, and Elsie wasn't bashful at all. Willy, he stood there turnin' red an' he couldn't even talk. Elsie says, 'I know what you come for; the bull's out in back a the barn.' Well, they took the heifer out there an' Willy an' Elsie sat on the fence to watch. Purty soon Willy got feelin' purty fly. Elsie looks over an' says, like she don't know, 'What's a matter, Willy?' Willy's so randy, he can't hardly set still. 'By God,' he says, 'by God, I wisht I was a-doin' that!' Elsie says, 'Why not, WIlly? It's your heifer. — John Steinbeck

There are the dirtstreaked glass panes of the bay windows, there are the heavy, moth-eaten drapes, and there, half hidden by the curtains, pointed face peeking out with that familiar worried look, is Elsie. — Anonymous

Imitation both unconscious and conscious is par excellence the educational method of the family. It is plain that a considerable part of the adaptation of living beings to their environment, i.e., of beings that are born plastic, is passed on from generation to generation through imitation. Were this not so, much if not all of the road traversed by one generation would have to be travelled by the next generation from the very beginning and without short-cuts. Consequently there would be little chance for the novel adaptation, the propitious individual variation, that constitutes progress. — Elsie Clews Parsons

Cottage cheese, broken down into its simplest form, is milk that has been curdled to mimic the cellulite its consumption is meant to banish. — Elsie Love

By realizing the spiritual power of Thought, versus getting into the content of thought, you will make your reality a mentally healthier one — Elsie Spittle

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

Grandma has a .45 long barrel that she keeps hidden from my mother. She got it from her friend Elsie, who picked it up at a yard sale. Probably it was in Grandma's purse. Grandma says it gives the bag some heft, in case she has to beat off a mugger. This might be true, but I think mostly Grandma likes pretending she is Clint Eastwood. — Janet Evanovich

A society's apprehensiveness about divorce is an expression of its fear of change and of its resulting desire that personality remain unvarying. — Elsie Clews Parsons

When Captain Moresby landed on New Guinea, a medicine-man exorcised the evil spirit in him by magical jugglery with palm leaves and by playing a kind of leapfrog. — Elsie Clews Parsons

Henry Denton: You Brits really don't have a sense of humor do you?
Elsie: We do if something's funny, sir. — Julian Fellowes

Oh, don't be afraid of being a skeptic, Patrick," Elsie said. "It's the duty of each generation to examine the 'wisdom' passed on by the previous generation. We'd — Tom Phelan

As her breath caught in her throat, Vanessa grabbed the first diversion she spotted - a glossy visitor's guide to the city - and sat down, determined not to let her thoughts travel back in time. But as she flipped through the pages without seeing them, her determination failed, and a flood of memories poured over her. Tears began slipping down her cheeks, one by one, until she started sobbing, and the guide slipped to the floor. — Elsie Hillman-Gordon

and go over and over in his mind the manifold possibilities, probabilities and potentialities — Elsie Lincoln Benedict

I'm more influenced by people's attitudes and spirits than by their particular style. Whether it's Elsie de Wolfe or Pauline de Rothschild, I always admire women who had a vision and stuck to it. Because ultimately, the way you live has to be a reflection of you. — Charlotte Moss

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

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

Rules for Living by Olivia Joules

14) Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

and then the new one from Elsie, added at the bottom:

15) Don't regret anything. Remember there wasn't anything else that could have happened, given who you were and the state of the world at that moment. The only thing you can change is the present, so learn from the past. — Helen Fielding

Elsie caught herself staring at it with a kind of craving that transcended hunger. She knew every cherry dimple, every beautiful chocolate curl. For her, the cake was a reminder of all that had been and a pledge of all that she'd have again. — Sarah McCoy

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

I admire the Elsie Tanners and Barbara Windsors of the world: people who have crawled back from the abyss. I'm quite camp in that respect. — Jenny Eclair

I could see, in the haze to the north, the tall stacks of the mighty Borden phosphate and fertilizer plant in Bradenton, spewing lethal fluorine and sulphuric-acid components into the vacation sky. In the immediate area it is known bitterly as the place where Elsie the Cow coughed herself to death. I have read where it had been given yet another two years to correct its massive and dangerous pollution. Big Borden must have directors somewhere. Maybe, like the Penn Central directors, they are going to sit on their respective docile asses until the roof falls in. There are but two choices. Either they know they condone poisoning and don't give a damn, or they don't know they condone poisoning and don't give a damn. Anybody can walk into any brokerage office and be told where to look to find a complete list of the names of the directors and where they live. Drop the fellows a line, huh? — John D. MacDonald

What constitutes a problem is not the thing, or the environment where we find the thing, but the conjunction of the two; something unexpected in a usual place (our favorite aunt in our favorite poker parlor) or something usual in an unexpected place (our favorite poker in our favorite aunt). I knew that my sampler was absolutely right in Elsie Norris's front room, but absolutely wrong in Mrs. Virtue's sewing class. Mrs. Virtue should either have had the imagination to commend me for my effort in context, or the farsightedness to realize there is a debate going on as to whether something has an absolute as well as a relative value; given that, she should have given me the benefit of the doubt.
As it was, she got upset and blamed me for her headache. — Jeanette Winterson

Behind all the falling rain, the sun still hangs in the sky. And if the sun can hang in there through the rain, surely you can, too. — Elsie Hillman-Gordon

My advice to you, Elsie, is go with your heart, not your head, because your head doesn't know what it wants. It only thinks about the moral high ground. And if your heart isn't happy, when you try to share it, you'll make others unhappy too. — Sarah Alexander

Every day I'm eternally grateful that when everyone else went right, I made a wide, unprotected left. — Elsie Love

Well, we're originally from Glace Bay."

Grandma Elsie's eyes glittered. She was looking at one of her own, a lost Cape Bretoner in need of help and offering a new story. "Tell me all about it, dear. — Beatrice Rose Roberts

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

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

"All that history, the love & laughter, is designed for youth. It is what keeps the story of who we are alive from one generation to the next. It ensures our indelible mark in the souls of generations we will never have the pleasure of holding in a warm embrace. Life is short people. Before you know it, another decade will pass, people you love will be lost to this world, and all that will be left of them is what we carry in our hearts." Elsie Love 2011 — Elsie Love

1945 Elsie, I hope this letter finds its way to your good hands. Tobias and I are among friends in Zurich. The news of the Allied invasion of Garmisch is bittersweet. Though we are German, our Fatherland is no longer a welcoming place. The Jewish families I hid for over a year - the Mailers and the Zuckermanns - lost nearly all their extended family members over the course of these wretched years. Thanks to your engagement ring, we were able to bribe the SS guards and smuggle Nanette Mailer, her friend, and the Zuckermanns' niece, Tabita, from KZ Dachau before the march. Unfortunately, Tobias's sister, Cecile, succumbed to — Sarah McCoy

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

It never registered to them that I had time to read all of Balzac, Dickens, and Stendhal while Papa was dying, not to mention everything in the city library after Mother's operation. It would have been exactly the same to them if I had read through all twenty-six volumes of Elsie Dinsmore. (The White Azalea) — Elizabeth Spencer

Elsie's shop was a treasure chest, where green wellies and waxed jackets originated way before Hunter and Barbour became household names. If she did not have what you wanted, dearie, she would go up to her vast attic, root around and come down to announce in triumph she had exactly the right thing even if you hadn't been looking for it. Some said her attics went back as far as Broadhampton Bay. — Maddie Grigg

Elsie, who had a lot of energy and no shame ... she seduced me. It was not a success, from Elsie's point of view, because the orgasm for women was just coming into general popularity then, and she didn't have one. — Robertson Davies

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

I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint. — 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

Alone and lost, appeared this saint,

With pretty gray eyes, darkness can't taint.

He stole her from cold, from blustering storm,

Kind and gentle, he took her from harm.

Fearful of dark, he created her light,

A jar of gold, chasing demons of night.

Telling stories of love, he brought to her life,

A moment by his side: no pain, no strife.

He gifted her poems, a gesture on whim,

With every word read, she could see only him.

She counted the days until he returned home,

The boy with his light, the girl not alone.

Invisible to all, a shade wandering in dark,

He brought back her faith, with his pure kind heart.

- Elsie — Tillie Cole

If I didn't laugh, I'd rip out my hair, one graying strand at a time. — Elsie Love

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

Amy," Elsie Moore said in her crackling voice, her gaze fixed on Declan. "I want you to get me a new bear. A blond one. — Ilona Andrews

First, you must be certain that you are ready for knowledge. There are many things that we bury in our minds for a reason. Are you sure that you want to go digging up the past?"- Elsie (Marked Book #1) page 226 — A.N. Meade

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

Elsie started to tell a lie she knew her husband wanted to hear. I don't love Buddy. I love you. To her astonishment, what came out was "I'm sorry." When she realized what she had said, she tried to tell her lie again but it still came out the same. "I'm sorry." "So — Homer Hickam

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

Most people use less brains in selecting the person with whom they are to spend their lives than they do in choosing an automobile, a bicycle or a cut of steak. Love isn't enough; there must also be understanding. — Elsie Lincoln Benedict

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 asked Elsie how much food they needed from outside the community. 'Flour and sugar,' she said, and then thought a bit. 'Sometimes we'll buy pretzels as a splurge.'
It crossed my mind that the world's most efficient psychological evaluation would have just one question: Define splurge. — Barbara Kingsolver

My breast cancer was caught very early thanks to my doctor a wonderful woman named Elsie Giogi, who just recently passed away after practicing medicine into her 80's. At the time, she had suggested I go for a baseline mammogram before age 40 because I had fibrocystic breasts. The mammogram discovered a tiny tumor, and it was so small that they were able to take it out very easily. I had a lumpectomy. Unfortunately, they did miss a little of the cancer, and two years later I had a mastectomy. But hey, I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm going to live to be 100! — Kate Jackson

Hemingway reached over and took Elsie's hand. "Do you know Dylan Thomas? I have always admired his take on death. Like he, I intend to go raging against the dying of the light." "Dear, — Homer Hickam

By my count, the Deputy Prime Minister has sworn an oath of loyalty and service to Her Majesty no fewer than four times in the last two years, yet he has used his position as a minister of the Crown as a podium from which to rail against our history and our heritage. The minister says that instead of the monarchy he would prefer an entirely Canadian institution, but he fails to recognize that the monarchy is as Canadian as the House of Commons itself. — Elsie Wayne

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

As an adult, I know about life and death. I know that good people can die too soon and bad ones can live too long. I know that life's not fair, and you take the bitter with the sweet and balance it all as best you can. — Elsie Hillman-Gordon

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

It's very natural to believe that everything is aimed at you: storm, cold, whatever. Most of the time it's not; you just happen to be there when it's happening. If you believe that, it will make life easier. — Elsie Aidinoff

The smallest part is worthy of the whole. — 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

Meanwhile, the minute you put on the dotted line your Sam Hancock - and before a notary - you'll not only get the negative but Elsie makes a wonderful stuffed cabbage which we'll include gratis a few portions but return the jars please. — Woody Allen

Only two bags, huh?" Helga was eighty, feisty, and the fastest knitter Elsie had ever seen. "We'll have to work on that. It's not a respectable stash until it has its own room. — Debora Geary

If you're always a giver, give yourself a break. Take time for yourself; your well-being is at stake. If you're always a receiver, try a turn at giving. Experience for yourself one of the joys of living. — Elsie Hillman-Gordon

The point is to learn to live with roots inside yourself, instead of a thousand stupid rules to guide your day. Who are you without your rules, Elsie? Who would you find if you had the guts to just lie still and let go? — Debora Geary

As Elsie showered, she realized she had learned something. She was attracted to the kind of man Denver was. He drove fast and was dangerous and handsome but, she reflected, he was also, in his own way, needy. If he wasn't showing off to a pretty girl, it was Elsie's guess he was fairly miserable. Elsie was happy she didn't have to put up with such a man all the way to Florida. Homer, despite all his many flaws - mostly, she had to concede, having to do with his good character - well, he would do just fine for that chore. — Homer Hickam

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 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 believe that all learning is relational. Teachers who try to teach without first having created a positive relationship with their students may only be wasting much of their great knowledge. Establish an encouraging relationship with a child, and you can teach him or her almost anything. Establish a strong therapeutic alliance with your client, and he or she might even be willing to build new neuronal pathways that indicate that trust, love, and unconditional worth are possible for him or her too. — Elsie Jones-Smith

Fear of change is a part of the state of fear man has ever lived in but out of which he has begun to escape. Civilization might be defined indeed as the steps in his escape. — Elsie Clews Parsons

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

There were fairies at Cottingley — Elsie Wright

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

Will power is human electricity. You have enough of this electricity generated in you to achieve the greatest things in life if you would
keep the current on. — Elsie Lincoln Benedict

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

Deep breathing brings deep thinking and shallow breathing shallow thinking. — Elsie Lincoln Benedict