Life & Wisdom Quote by Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“You can't make a souffle rise twice” is Alice Roosevelt Longworth at her most lethal: a domestic metaphor sharpened into political doctrine. A souffle is airy, temperamental, and briefly magnificent; once it deflates, no amount of coaxing restores the original lift. In one line, she punctures the American faith in comebacks, revivals, and second acts. It’s not just pessimism. It’s a social warning: some moments are engineered by heat, timing, and collective belief, and when that chemistry breaks, the performance becomes pantomime.

The intent is practical and a little cruel. Don’t try to resurrect yesterday’s triumph - a candidate, a fad, a romance, a reputation - because the attempt exposes the loss. The subtext is status-savvy: Longworth, a Washington insider and famously acerbic observer of power, understood that political capital behaves less like money and more like souffle. It depends on attention, novelty, and the illusion of inevitability. Once the room senses collapse, the collapse accelerates.

The line also works because it’s gendered without being “about” gender. She borrows the language of the parlor and kitchen to deliver a verdict on public life, flipping a domain used to domesticate women into a tool for domination. Coming from Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter - a celebrity in her own right, a hostess at the center of D.C.’s gossip economy - it reads as lived intelligence: in politics and society, timing is the ingredient you can’t buy, and nostalgia is the fastest way to serve something flat.