​“I’ve always had a good time at my own parties. I think that is what every woman who gives a party should have. The day has gone by, thank goodness, when the hostess made a martyr of herself by taking the dullest, least responsive man among her guests for her dinner partner. Nowadays she picks the most attractive and interesting man in the room and makes her end the center of fun. This isn’t selfishness. It’s good hostessship. Your enjoyment is as contagious to your guests as the measles.”
 
--Dorothy Draper, Entertaining Is Fun! How to Be a Popular Hostesss

Image Credit: The Draper Touch, The Life & High Style of Dorothy Draper

“People are fascinated by the rich: Shakespeare wrote plays about kings, not beggars.”
 
Dominick Dunne

Image via The Power of Theatrical Madness

From a legendary fashion designer's Proust Questionnaire in the October 2009 issue of Vanity Fair:

Q. Who [is] your favorite writer?

A. Ayn Rand.

Q. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

A. Selfishness. 

“Again, it is we who pass, but not ever time.”
 
Leo Lerman, The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman

Image Credit: The Hurrell Style

"It isn’t that the people who ought to be going to the theatre are going to the ‘movies.’ Is that the people who ought to be going to the ‘movies’ are going to the theatre.” 
 
Percy Hammond, But–Is It Art

Image Credit: Literary Lights, A Book of Caricatures

"One year I was giving a big party and between noon and 4 o'clock [and] 45 people rang up to cancel. That was rather surprising. The answer soon became clear. A friend called Colonel Daniel Sickles, who had several glamorous daughters, and was a great book-collector, had given a buffet and dance the night before. He had served eggs from metal dishes which had poisoned many of the guests. Several of them ended up in the hospital and three died. It shows the hazards of entertaining." 

--Baron Alexis de Redé, Alexis, The Memoirs of the Baron de Redé 

Image Credit: Collection du Baron de Redé, Provenant de L’Hôtel Lambert, Sotheby’s Paris, 2005

​“Is there not some weird Middle Eastern sect in which the Devil is considered a saint, for having got Adam and Eve moving on from their Garden of Eden?”
 
Nicholas Mosley, Hopeful Monsters

“There is a relationship between form and content (which is why I personally disapprove of plastic surgery). We are what we look like. Artifice can be a dangerous thing; when misapplied, the results are vulgar and tawdry. Its correct use depends on instinct. But when properly invoked, it is not merely an illusion; rather, it makes the observer see what he should see.”
 
Cecil Beaton, Beaton in Vogue

Image Credit: Angus McBean Portraits

“Suddenly you have to remember a dozen Kardashians, and really, who has the time?”
 
Liz Smith, "At 92, Liz Smith Reveals How Rupert Murdoch Fired Her, What It Felt Like to Be Outed,” Hollywood Reporter, April 8, 2015

Image Credit: Confessions of a Window Dresser

“An American client who thought she spoke French used to raise her hand high and say ‘Baisez-moi!’ I doubt she was aware that her command was for something stronger than just kissing her hand.”
 
Monsieur Marc, Nouveau Is Better Than No Riche at All