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.
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.
Simplicity, suitability and proportion.
My business is to preach to you the beauty of suitability.
Eating outdoors makes for good health and long life and good temper, everyone knows that.
Light, air and comfort – these three things I must always have in a room...
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.
I was born with the courage to live. Only those are unwise who have never dared to be fools.
Good dressing is largely a question of detail and accessories.
It is not chic to be too chic.
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.
A house should be a synthesis of comfort, practicality, and tradition.
It does not matter whether one paints a picture, writes a poem, or carves a statue – simplicity is the mark of a master-hand...
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.
Never, under any circumstance, do I touch soup, as I do not believe in building a meal on a lake.
You can’t take it with you. There are no pockets in a shroud.
I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint.
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.
I opened the doors and windows of America, and let the air and sunshine in.
No, I don’t take soup. You can’t build a meal on a lake.
No one chair should be isolated...