Quote

[On the British Museum:] It was manifestly impossible to read all the books in that huge, gloomy structure, but I made a good try and accumulated a fund of useless information guaranteed to cast a pall over any dinner table.

Elsa Maxwell

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Elsa Maxwell
Age: 80 †
Born: 1883
Born: May 24
Died: 1963
Died: November 1
Author
Journalist
Pianist
Socialite
Writer
New York City
New York
Impossible
Useless
Guaranteed
Books
Tables
Gloomy
Read
Dinner
Museum
Book
British
Museums
Trying
Structure
Fund
Made
Conversation
Cast
Pall
Good
Huge
Casts
Manifestly
Information
Table
Accumulated

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Intolerance of mediocrity has been the main prop of my independence.
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Etiquette-a fancy word for simple kindness.
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What is a bore? Maxwell definition: a vacuum cleaner of society, sucking up everything and giving nothing. How do you spot one? Bores are always anxious to be seen talking to you.
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Serve the dinner backward, do anything - but for goodness sake, do something weird.
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Good manners - the longer I live the more convinced I am of it - are a priceless insurance against failure and loneliness. And anyone can have them.
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Giving parties is a trivial avocation, but it pays the dues for my union card in humanity.
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Protocol may be defined as the code of etiquette which protects royalty from the competition of intellectual and social superiors.
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To get fifty people to a cocktail party in New York, you ask one hundred. In Hollywood, you invite twenty.
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Down with boredom. It has to go.
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[On Hollywood:] I had gone there expecting to see parties that reflected the stock-in-trade of the movies - glamour. Instead, I found the same attitude toward parties that European peasants had for baths. It was something to be done methodically every Saturday night.
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Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can.
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Anatomize the character of a successful hostess and the knife will lay bare the fact that she owes her position to one of three things: either she is liked, or she is feared, or she is important.
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Keep your talent in the dark and you'll never be insulted.
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Only those who have earned leisure know how to use it profitably.
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Bores put you in a mental cemetery while you are still walking.
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the wealthy ... live in marble mausoleums surrounded by the suspicions and neuroses that have replaced the medieval moats which once isolated so-called aristocrats from reality.
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People who have escaped from poverty are like old soldiers. In later years they recount the little, amusing incidents that happened infrequently, and conveniently forget the long, unrelieved stretches of misery and boredom.
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Someone has said that life itself is a party: you join after it's started and you leave before it's finished.
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I don't hate anyone. I dislike. But my dislike is the equivalent of anyone else's hate.
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I make enemies deliberately. They are the sauce piquante to my dish of life.
Elsa Maxwell