Seeing unhappiness in the marriage of friends, I was content to have chosen music and laughter as a substitute for a husband.

- Elsa Maxwell

Good manners spring from just one thing - kind impulses.

- Elsa Maxwell

Under pressure, people admit to murder, setting fire to the village church or robbing a bank, but never to being bores.

- Elsa Maxwell

The secret of my success is that no woman has ever been jealous of me.

- Elsa Maxwell

Someone has said that life itself is a party: you join after it's started and you leave before it's finished.

- Elsa Maxwell

the wealthy ... live in marble mausoleums surrounded by the suspicions and neuroses that have replaced the medieval moats which once isolated so-call…

- Elsa Maxwell

Serve the dinner backward, do anything - but for goodness sake, do something weird.

- Elsa Maxwell

Most rich people are the poorest people I know.

- Elsa Maxwell

Intolerance of mediocrity has been the main prop of my independence.

- Elsa Maxwell