Quotes & Sayings About Vanderbilt

When people say, 'Doesn't Gloria [Vanderbilt] look great? She's 85.' I say, 'Yes, she was a raving beauty when she was 20,' that's the key. Very helpful. — Fran Lebowitz

Human attention, in the best of circumstances, is a fluid but fragile entity. Beyond a certain threshold, the more that is asked of it, the less well it performs. When this happens in a psychological experiment, it is interesting. When it happens in traffic, it can be fatal. — Tom Vanderbilt

Have great, secret, big, fat hopes for yourself. — Gloria Vanderbilt

Intersections are crash magnets. — Tom Vanderbilt

Only a great fool or a great genius is likely to flout all social grace with impunity, and neither one, doing so, makes the most comfortable companion. — Amy Vanderbilt

I don't like cold people at all. It makes me feel really insecure. — Gloria Vanderbilt

The public be damned! (on whether the public should be consulted about luxury trains Aug 1918 — William Henry Vanderbilt

I've resolved so many things in my life. I like the idea of showing that you can go through a lot and still be on your feet, still be working, and still be positive about life. — Gloria Vanderbilt

Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt don't wear clothes with your name on it, so why should you wear their name? — Mr. T

I am not afraid of my enemies, but by God, you must look out when you get among your friends. — Cornelius Vanderbilt

I love to think that animals and humans and plants and fishes and trees and stars and the moon are all connected. — Gloria Vanderbilt

You are not put on this earth to see through people. You are put on this earth to see people through. — Gloria Vanderbilt

To be happy--one must find one's bliss — Gloria Vanderbilt

Sometimes, you'll watch the news and you'll see two-year-old boys in South Africa, wearing 'Spider-Man' t-shirts. It's such a global phenomenon. — James Vanderbilt

Some of us are born with a sense of loss. It is not acquired as we grow. It is already there from the beginning, and it pervades us throughout our lives. — Gloria Vanderbilt

The only thing that would ever embarrass me would be something I would write that would be badly written. — Gloria Vanderbilt

I'm a ham. I always like to answer spontaneously. — Gloria Vanderbilt

One of the goals of life is to try and be in touch with one's most personal themes-the values, the ideas, styles, colors that are the touchstones of one's own individual life, its real texture and substance. — Gloria Vanderbilt

I was fearless. Wild horses couldn't stop me. — Gloria Vanderbilt

In mythology and palmistry, the left hand is called the dreamer because the ring finger on the left hand leads directly to the heart. I find it a very poetic idea. And that's why I only wear nail polish on my left ring finger. — Gloria Vanderbilt

It's very much related to the American tycoon. To William Randolph Hearst, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, that whole stratum of American acquisitive evil. Monopolistic, acquisitive evil. Ugly evil. The ugly American. The ugly American at his ugly worst. That's exactly what it is. — Allen Ginsberg

That is the best-to laugh with someone because you both think the same things are funny. — Gloria Vanderbilt

The best-dressed women I know pay very little attention to the picayune aspects of fashion, but they have a sound understanding of style. — Amy Vanderbilt

If you have health, you have everything. — Gloria Vanderbilt

One face to the world, another at home - makes for misery. — Amy Vanderbilt

I don't think age has anything to do with what you write about. — Gloria Vanderbilt

You have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you. — Cornelius Vanderbilt

When a situation feels dangerous to you, it's probably more safe than you know; when a situation feels safe, that is precisely when you should feel on guard. — Tom Vanderbilt

French Louis Seymour of the West Canada Creek, who knew how to survive all alone in a treacherous wilderness, and Mr. Alfred G. Vanderbilt of New York City and Raquette Lake, who was richer than God and traveled in his very own Pullman car, and Emmie Hubbard of the Uncas Road, who painted the most beautiful pictures when she was drunk and burned them in her woodstove when she was sober, were all ten times more interesting to me than Milton's devil or Austen's boy-crazy girls or that twitchy fool of Poe's who couldn't think of any place better to bury a body than under his own damn floor. — Jennifer Donnelly

The modern rule is that every woman should be her own chaperone. — Amy Vanderbilt

This raises the interesting, if seemingly outlandish, question of why car drivers, virtually alone among users of wheeled transport, do not wear helmets. Yes, cars do provide a nice metal cocoon with inflatable cushions. But in Australia, for example, head injuries among car occupants, according to research by the Federal Office of Road Safety, make up half the country's traffic-injury costs. Helmets, cheaper and more reliable than side-impact air bags, would reduce injuries and cut fatalities by some 25 percent.95 A crazy idea, perhaps, but so were air bags once. — Tom Vanderbilt

In the first stage, the city is proposing to begin reviewing a zoning change for what it is calling the Vanderbilt corridor, from 42nd to 47th Streets along Vanderbilt Avenue. If approved, developers would be allowed to build taller and larger buildings than currently permitted in exchange for substantive transportation improvements. — Anonymous

The bell of public opinion is today making the Morgan-Rockefeller-Vanderbilt class jump. Nor are the strongest of our corporations immune. The railroads have had to jump pretty lively, and certain gigantic industrial combinations are also being put through their paces. — B.C. Forbes

There is a simple mantra you can carry about you in traffic: When a situation feels dangerous to you, it's probably more safe than you know; when a situation feels safe, that is precisely when you should feel on guard. Most crashes, after all, happen on dry roads, on clear, sunny days, to sober drivers. — Tom Vanderbilt

Death is the price you paid for being born. — Gloria Vanderbilt

Many times, working is kind of like channeling, and I really don't know what's going to fall on the page. I just did this image of a fat girl and put her on a tiny mountain peak of grass that she's walking over. It just amused me. — Gloria Vanderbilt

In anything there has to be dark and light. There's a lot of joy in my paintings and a lot of darkness. — Gloria Vanderbilt

You must always have great, secret, big fat hopes for yourself in love and in life. The bigger, the better. — Gloria Vanderbilt

As Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert argues, 'You can't adapt to commuting, because it's entirely unpredictable. Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day.' — Tom Vanderbilt

Perhaps Vanderbilt's most important role in the interest of our free society is to give the world educated men and women of character, possessing a fundamental integrity that affects both their thoughts and their actions. — Joe B Wyatt

I don't care half so much about making money as I do about making my point, and coming out ahead. — Cornelius Vanderbilt

I'm the girliest girl you are ever going to meet. — Gloria Vanderbilt

If I had learned education I would not have had time to learn anything else. — Cornelius Vanderbilt

When I was photographed, I didn't feel I was acting. I just felt I was being photographed. It sort of taught me things about myself that I didn't know and was trying to find out. — Gloria Vanderbilt

Cats are so interesting - endlessly fascinating. — Gloria Vanderbilt

It's probably no accident that whenever one hears of a smart technology, it refers to something that has been taken out of human control. — Tom Vanderbilt

Experts are people who have the same opinions as other experts. — Tom Vanderbilt

I have had no real gratification or enjoyment of any sort more than my neighbour on the next block who is worth only half a million. — William Henry Vanderbilt

Whether advanced driver training helps drivers in the long term is one of those controversial and unresolved mysteries of the road, but my eye-opening experience at Bondurant raises the curious idea that we buy cars - for most people one of the most costly things they will ever own - with an underdeveloped sense of how to use them. This is true for many things, arguably, but not knowing what the F9 key does in Microsoft Word is less life-threatening than not knowing how to properly operate antilock brakes. — Tom Vanderbilt

Do not smoke without asking permission or sit so near (as in a train) that the smoke might annoy. — Amy Vanderbilt

The anxious positioning Bourdieu had noted could be felt in a tweeted "humblebrag," an attempt to claim cultural capital without looking as if one were doing so. — Tom Vanderbilt

The public be damned. — William Henry Vanderbilt

Never be a minion, always be an owner. — Cornelius Vanderbilt

I'd love to study in the U.S. I visited Vanderbilt in Nashville, and I've been told to check out Ole Miss. There are so many schools that I don't really know where to start. But I do love the U.S. and have met so many supportive and enthusiastic people here while I've been on tour. I could definitely live here! — Alexandra Adornetto

Knowing where to look - and remembering what you have seen - is a hallmark of experience and expertise. — Tom Vanderbilt

Do not speak of repulsive matters at table. — Amy Vanderbilt

I've been really very fortunate with the men I've been involved with. They've always really treated me very, very wonderfully. And whenever anything broke up, I was always the one to leave. So I think I've been really very, very lucky. — Gloria Vanderbilt

The railroads are not run for the benefit of the dear public. That cry is nonsense. They are built for men who invest their money and expect to get a fair percentage of the same. — William Henry Vanderbilt

It is not according to my mode of doing things, to bring a suit against a man that I have the power in my own hands to punish. — Cornelius Vanderbilt

Never tell anyone what you are going to do till you've done it. — Cornelius Vanderbilt

The minute that you bring a unicorn into a story, you know that it's a fairy tale or a fable, because unicorns don't exist as animals. They exist as fantasy creatures. — Gloria Vanderbilt

This is the reason the whole 'keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel, use the hands-free handset' idea is a silly thing," Simons said. "Having your eyes on the road doesn't do any good unless your attention is on the road too. — Tom Vanderbilt

Traffic was as much an emotional problem as it was a mechanical one. — Tom Vanderbilt

My charitable donations go to educational efforts, such as Teach for America, Vanderbilt University, Berkshire School. — Thomas Peterffy

I am a journalist in the field of etiquette. I try to find out what the most genteel people regularly do, what traditions they have discarded, what compromises they have made. — Amy Vanderbilt

disappearing into the rent sky. — K.M. Vanderbilt

I never looked at magazines before I started modeling. I was 13 or 14 and none of my friends were into magazines. We were into the fashion of the day, though. Designer jeans were really popular - Sasson, Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein, Jordache. Once I started modeling, I began to learn about these things, and magazines helped me to understand who was who. — Christy Turlington

I'll always remain friends with men I've been in love with. Each one gave me so much, in so many ways. — Gloria Vanderbilt

I have always served the public to the best of my ability. Why? Because, like every other man, it is to my interest to do so. — Cornelius Vanderbilt

You breathe in and out; you breathe in and you breathe out, and you live one moment into the next moment, and then time goes by, and you find you're able to put one foot in front of the other. — Gloria Vanderbilt

In America, a pedestrian is someone who has just parked their car. — Tom Vanderbilt

Many traffic signs have become like placebos, giving false comfort to the afflicted, or simple boilerplate to ward off lawsuits, the roadway version of the Kellogg's Pop-Tarts box that says, Warning: Pastry Filling May Be Hot When Heated. — Tom Vanderbilt

Today Americans living below the poverty line are not just light-years ahead of most Africans; they're light-years ahead of the wealthiest Americans from just a century ago. Today 99 percent of Americans living below the poverty line have electricity, water, flushing toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 percent have a television; 88 percent have a telephone; 71 percent have a car; and 70 percent even have air-conditioning. This may not seem like much, but one hundred years ago men like Henry Ford and Cornelius Vanderbilt were among the richest on the planet, but they enjoyed few of these luxuries. — Peter H. Diamandis

I've done well because I'm lucky and I'm willing to be collaborative with the one thing you don't want to be collaborative with: your writing. — James Vanderbilt

The road itself tells us far more than signs do. — Tom Vanderbilt

I do think all art is autobiographical, and I do think I know quite a bit about women. I don't know anything about men. — Gloria Vanderbilt

Even death is wonderful because, as Woody Allen says, we're not going to know when it happens. — Gloria Vanderbilt

If you've never had a mother or a father, you grow up seeking something you're never going to find, ever. You seek it in love and in people and in beauty. — Gloria Vanderbilt

Art brings a message into a room. It should make us perceive in a new way - either through color, form or narrative content - something we had not perceived before ... and perhaps reveal something to you about yourself. — Gloria Vanderbilt

Breakfast is the one meal at which it is permissible to read the paper ... — Amy Vanderbilt

I do take very good care of myself, and I'm always in love. And by that I mean I have an appetite for life. I'm in love with beauty and things and people and love and being in love, and those things I think, on the inside, show on the outside. — Gloria Vanderbilt

The pursuit of a kind of absolute safety, above all other considerations of what makes places good environments, has not only made those streets and cities less attractive, it has, in many cases, made them less safe. — Tom Vanderbilt

I believe in marriage and fidelity. — Gloria Vanderbilt

A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper. But a lot of it is imagination. It's not based on real people. — Gloria Vanderbilt

For the Vanderbilts lived in a day when flaunting one's money was not only accepted but celebrated. What may have started as playacting, as dressing up as dukes and princesses for fancy dress balls in fairytale palaces, soon developed into a firm conviction that they were indeed the new American nobility. — Arthur T. Vanderbilt II

Law! What do I care about the law? Ain't I got the power? — Cornelius Vanderbilt

I lived in Europe until I was 9, really. — Gloria Vanderbilt

I completely trust Gloria Vanderbilt. I have always found her very honest. — Michael Lindsay-Hogg

Going to Vanderbilt did a lot of things for me, and one of the things it cured me of was the need to follow college football. — Roy Blount Jr.

In Hollywood, not to have an analyst is virtually an admission of failure ... — Amy Vanderbilt

The way humans hunt for parking and the way animals hunt for food are not as different as you might think. — Tom Vanderbilt

I have a tremendous appetite for life; the phone rings and your whole life could change. — Gloria Vanderbilt

The public be damned. I am working for my stockholders. — William Henry Vanderbilt

We are not put on this earth to see through one another. We are put on this earth to see one another through. — Gloria Vanderbilt

I don't read anything about myself. As a child, there was something in me that was just instinctive. I want to be clear in my spirit, and I don't want to be blocked by things that get inside of you and kill you. — Gloria Vanderbilt

As I sat in the hot, salty water, I thought, 'No wonder Mr. Bubble always gives me a urinary tract infection and hives.' Mr. Bubble was for common people. Mr. Bubble was for my so-called brother, their true child. I was a Vanderbilt. I should bathe in condiments and seasonings. — Augusten Burroughs

I'm always in love. If it's not with a man, it's something else. I love beauty. I love the sky I see outside the window. There's so much beauty in the world. — Gloria Vanderbilt

Ceremony is-really a protection, too, in times of emotional involvement, particularly at death. If we have a social formula to guide us and do not have to extemporize, we feel better able to handle life. — Amy Vanderbilt

But we should be wary of people reeling off ornate wine or coffee descriptions: Our ability to correctly identify particular odors in a complex, blended mixture, for example, begins to hit a "ceiling" at three. Beyond that, tests have shown, people become worse than chance at picking out correct aromas. As — Tom Vanderbilt

I've never found time to indulge more than a single ambition. — Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.