Addison Mizner

Addison Mizner (December 12, 1872 – February 5, 1933) was an American architect, adventurer, and entrepreneur. He is best known for creating a Florida style of architecture in Palm Beach, Florida and for being the "father of Boca Raton". In his day he was the most famous living American architect. He was affiliated with his brother, Wilson Mizner, in a series of scams and picaresque misadventures that, with considerable liberties, inspired Stephen Sondheim's Bounce!.

The Cynic's Calendar
quoted by Alva Johnston, The Legendary Mizners, 1953, Farrar Straus and Young, New York
 * Where there's a will, there's a law suit.


 * Many are called, but few get up.


 * The wages of gin is breath.


 * Be held truthful that your lies may count.


 * Misery loves company but company does not reciprocate.


 * People who love in glass houses should pull down the blinds.

From his sketchbook
quoted by Alva Johnston, The Legendary Mizners, 1953, Farrar Straus and Young, New York
 * ...Louis Fourteenth Street furniture...


 * ...teeth set out by a landscape gardener...


 * Two ideas in his head at once would constitute an unlawful assembly.


 * A cow couldn't find its calf in this room.


 * He has no manners&mdash;he just has customs.


 * ...talking as though the Standard Oil Company was the smallest thing he owned.

Private remarks

 * The son-of-a-bitch would shoot me just to make book on which way I'd fall!
 * Of his brother Wilson.
 * Quoted by Anita Loos, Kiss Hollywood Goodbye, Viking Press, New York, 1974, ISBN 0-670-41374-7.