Empty Mansions Quotes

“Huguette was a quiet woman in a noisy time.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“Pour vivre heureux, vivons cache. To live happily, live hidden.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“Though the platitude—money can’t buy happiness—may be comforting to those who are less than well heeled, great wealth doesn’t ensure sadness either.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“She desired not only the dolls and dollhouses but also the accessories that gave the appearance of daily life. For a breakfast scene, she cabled Au Nain Bleu asking for tiny French breads: croissants, brioches, madeleines, mille-feuilles, and turnovers. But she wasn't done. In a May 7,1956, cable to store, she wrote:
For the lovely pastry shop please send
the following: waffles, babas,
tartelettes, crepes, tartines, palm-
iers, galettes, cups of milk, tea and
coffee with milk, small butter jars,
fake jam and honey, small boxes of
chocolate, candies and candied fruits,
and small forks. Thank you.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“WE CAME TO THIS STORY by separate paths, one of us by accident and one by birth.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“CRICKET A poor little cricket Hidden in the flowery grass, Observes a butterfly Fluttering in the meadow. The winged insect shines with the liveliest colors: Azure, purple, and gold glitter on his wings; Young, handsome, foppish, he hastens from flower to flower, Taking from the best ones. Ah! says the cricket, how his lot and mine Are dissimilar! Lady Nature For him did everything, and for me nothing. I have no talent, even less beauty; No one takes notice of me, they know me not here below; Might as well not exist. As he was speaking, in the meadow Arrives a troop of children. Immediately they are running After this butterfly, for which they all have a longing. Hats, handkerchiefs, caps serve to catch him. The insect in vain tries to escape. He becomes soon their conquest. One seizes him by the wing, another by the body; A third arrives, and takes him by the head. It should not be so much effort To tear to pieces the poor creature. Oh! Oh! says the cricket, I am no more sorry; It costs too dear to shine in this world. How much I am going to love my deep retreat! To live happily, live hidden.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“In the rest of the story, Sleeping Beauty and the prince marry and have children. An ogress demands that the children and princess be cooked and served to her, though they are saved. Disney’s animated films also left out that part, agreeing with Huguette’s editing.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“California house, a palace on a cliff by the Pacific, and her father’s house, the largest in New York City, with a tower and 121 rooms, including one adorned with gold. Taking all this in, the neurologist wasn’t exactly sure how much to credit this tale of”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“I beg you to cultivate imagination, which means to develop your power of sympathy, and I entreat you to decide thoughtfully what makes a human being great in his time and in his station. The faculty of imagination is often lightly spoken of as of no real importance, often decried as mischievous, as in some ways the antithesis of practical sense, and yet it ranks with reason and conscience as one of the supreme characteristics by which man is distinguished from all other animals.… Sympathy, the great bond between human beings, is largely dependent on imagination—that is, upon the power of realizing the feelings and the circumstances of others so as to enable us to feel with and for them.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“One of W.A.'s descendants described the mixed blessing of inherited wealth: "I think having such wealth can lead some people to have a lack of self-worth because of not having developed a lucrative career of their own or even having investigated their own potential. Having an overabundance of wealth can make people insecure around others who have far less than they do, since the former might wonder if potential partners or even friends are 'only' after them for their money. Well-meaning people of excessive wealth can feel anxious about the lack of perfection of charities they support, and about the fact that even as willing patrons they are powerless to obliterate suffering--all the while knowing that any small amount of money that they might spend on themselves is still enough to change or even save some lives. Wealth can lead to guilt over the unfairness of people working endlessly for them who have never been included fully into the family. In sum, having immense wealth can lead one to feel isolated and to have a false sense of being special.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“The length of history spanned by father and daughter is hard to comprehend. W. A. Clark was born in 1839, during the administration of the eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren. W.A. was twenty-two when the Civil War began. When Huguette was born in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth president, was in the White House. Yet 170 years after W.A.’s birth, his youngest child was still alive at age 103 during the time of the forty-fourth president, Barack Obama.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“The colleges and other institutions of learning are going too far, in my opinion. I think 50% of those attending educational institutions, having the professions in view, would be better off with a common school education that would enable them to earn a living, rather than sit around in offices and wait for clients.
W.A. Clark (MT Senator, 1901-1907)”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“Huguette had a fairy-tale checkbook, one that was refilled whenever it ran out of magic beans.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“sojourn in Greenwich, Connecticut, known for its art colony.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“around 1917, the Butte-Anaconda area had fourteen thousand men working underground, an amalgamation of Irish, Italians, Chinese, Serbians”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“Andrew Carnegie’s theory was that life should be divided into three stages: education, making money, and giving all the money away.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“The tower held its own secret, a suite held in reserve for dark days. This was the quarantine suite, a valued space in these years before antibiotics, with bedrooms and its own kitchen, a refuge in case of a pandemic.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“in the words of Victor Hugo: “True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“He never touched a dollar except twenty came back in its place.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“They settled in Van Buren County, near the Missouri border and the Des Moines River village of Bentonsport. The youngest child, Anna Belle, was only six months old. In Iowa, three-year-old George died of whooping cough, and the last child, Effie Ellen, was born. Known as Ella, she was the grandmother of co-author Paul Newell.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“Eight more Clarks were born in Pennsylvania: John Reed, who died in infancy; Joseph Kithcart; Elizabeth; Margaret Johnson, who died in infancy; Mary Margaret; James Ross; George; and Anna Belle.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“W.A. went west to Atchison, Kansas. From there he drove a six-yoke bull team of oxen across the Great Plains to Manitou Springs, near present-day Colorado Springs,”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“W.A. was by no means the first of the tens of thousands of men who traveled west in search of El Dorado. Gold had been found in 1848 in California,”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“W.A. was taking classes both as a college freshman and a first-year law student, studying Latin, Greek, and geometry along with his legal contracts.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“1860, he enrolled in the study of classics and law at Iowa Wesleyan University, a Methodist Episcopal institution in Mount Pleasant. The tuition was twenty-five dollars a year.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“When she had been told that a baby sister was due, Andrée said to her mother, “Let me think it over.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“To live happily, live hidden.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

“Pour vivre heureux, vivons caché. To live happily, live hidden.”
― Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune