Quotes about hostess (15 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“The hostess is our modern Sibyl. She is a witch who lays her guests under a spell.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 4
Context: The hostess is our modern Sibyl. She is a witch who lays her guests under a spell. In this house they think themselves happy; in that witty; in a third profound. It is all an illusion (which is nothing against it, for illusions are the most valuable and necessary of all things, and she who can create one is among the world's greatest benefactors), but as it is notorious that illusions are shattered by conflict with reality, so no real happiness, no real wit, no real profundity are tolerated where the illusion prevails.

“The very sound of his own steps disturbed him; and he flung himself on a couch, to enjoy without interruption the exquisite melody. The intense perfume of the flowers intoxicated him like wine. He felt as if lulled in a delicious trance, in which one image became more and more distinct — the pale but lovely face of his hostess. His heart was filling with love for those radiant eyes. A softer fragrance breathed around him — it was her breath. He looked, and she was again bending over him; he saw himself mirrored in the moonlight of her eyes.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Love , Flowers , Wine , Heart

“So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"Just Keep Quiet and Nobody Will Notice"
I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938)

Thinking

“If by the time we're sixty we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and the bad are mingled in every action we take, and what a compromising hostess Our Lady of Truth is, we haven't grown old to much purpose.”

John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) British writer, lecturer and philosopher

The Art of Growing Old (1944), p. 13

Life , Truth , Learning , Time

“I just feel that there's a little bit of lack of respect and class just to kind of leave a tournament like that and then come out and practice here, especially being the hostess. You know, I don't know the situation, if it's injury or whatever it is. It's just -- it just seemed really weird.”

Annika Sörenstam (1970) Swedish golfer

Annika Sorenstam comments re Michelle Wie - Press Conference 2007 LPGA Championships http://www.asapsports.com/show_interview.php?id=43436

Feeling

“[Stendhal] was small, ugly and obsessed by physical beauty in others, and he spent most of his time in salons and opera houses, pursuing aristocratic hostesses and singers. After the fall of Napoleon, he retired to Italy, adopted his pseudonym and began to write. He was a sexual freebooter who “found a notion of obtaining happiness from a virtuous woman wholly inconceivable.””

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

At 59, unmarried, syphilitic and obscure, he dropped dead in a Paris street.
"Homage to QWERT YUIOP".
Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Beauty , Time , Housing , Dead

“It was while Princess Margaret was attending a high-society party in New York that the hostess asked her politely how the Queen was keeping. "Which one?" she is reported to have replied with her typically razor-sharp wit. "My sister, my mother or my husband?"”

Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930–2002) younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

From Snowdon: The Biography

Sister , Princess

“Objectively, class differences in accent, dress, manners, and general style of life are very much smaller; and one cannot, strolling about the street or travelling on a train, instantly identify a person’s social background as one can in England. Subjectively, social relations are more natural and egalitarian, and less marked by deference, submissiveness, or snobbery, as one quickly discovers from the cab-driver, the barman, the air-hostess and the drug-store assistant.”

Anthony Crosland book The Future of Socialism

The Future of Socialism by Anthony Crosland.
The Future of Socialism (1956)

Life , Travel , Nature , Personality

“I am a die hard fan of dancing and would take my dad's clothes and my mom's clothes and dance in front of the mirror. I loved my dad's clothes as they had a lot of glitter in them. My whole family speaks in this sing song way and, for a short period of time, I would practice these air hostess speeches. While my dad was comfortable with me being an actor, the only thing he said no was to becoming an air hostess.”

Shraddha Kapoor (1987) Indian film actress & Singer

I was most upset with the way people were talking about my dad: Shraddha via The Times of India (April 21, 2013) http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news-interviews/I-was-most-upset-with-the-way-people-were-talking-about-my-dad-Shraddha/articleshow/19649087.cms

Love , Family , Way , Moms

“For a viewer to think the custodian was trying to break free is the exact opposite of what the scene was supposed to convey. There is nothing gained from that kind of ambiguity. Ambiguity is not desirable or meaningful if it confuses an issue that is meant to be clear. This is the challenge of making a film that communicates but doesn't talk down: a lot of viewers and studio execs (and directors) hold that ANY ambiguity is the result of the filmmaker's failure. I disagree, but I also hold that, in order for ambiguity to be effective, certain things NEED to be unambiguous. For example, if it wasn't clear that Judy on the stage is the same character as Judy who'd invited Aeon to the Hostess' lair, then that's just bad execution. If the episode had been finished and seen in a version say, where we don't see her face drawn correctly, and viewers weren't sure it was the same character, they may wonder about things irrelevant to the story's themes, such as "do the custodians alter the appearance of their hosts", or "Trevor is masquerading a different person who is playing the role of Judy on the stage", etc, all of which does not help the story. Thinking that the custodian had a will of its own and wanted to break free is the same type of undesired speculation.”

Peter Chung (1961) Korean-American animator

Re: Utopia or Deuteranopia? http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?msgid=6622756

Communication , Failure , Thinking , Appearance

“Taste was his world. Rilke behaved as if art were taste elevated to the highest possible degree. The armigerous chatelaines who played hostess were happy to believe it, since the idea made them artists too.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Sergei Diaghilev, p. 172
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

World , Art , Idea , Happiness

“He reckoneth without his Hostesse. Love knoweth no lawes.”

John Lyly book Euphues

Source: Euphues (Arber [1580]), P. 84. Compare: "Reckeners without their host must recken twice", John Heywood, Proverbes, Part i, Chap. viii.