Mary McCarthy Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.

  Mary McCarthy

  Incessant, Labor, Behinds

  Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

  9 Copy quote

• To be disesteemed by people you don't have much respect for is not the worst fate.

  Mary McCarthy

  Fate, People, Worst

  New York Times, August 27, 1984.

  4 Copy quote

• Congress-these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage.

  Mary McCarthy

  Political, Speech, Fancy

  Mary McCarthy (1964). “The humanist in the bathtub”

  17 Copy quote

• Driving a car, you are in danger of killing; walking or standing, of being killed.

  Mary McCarthy

  Car, Driving, Killing

  Mary McCarthy (2016). “The Stones of Florence”, p.13, Pickle Partners Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• If you talked or laughed in church, told lies, had impure thoughts or conversations, you were bad; if you obeyed your parents or guardians, went to confession and communion regularly, said prayers for the dead, you were good.

  Mary McCarthy

  Prayer, Lying, Character

  Mary McCarthy (1975). “The company she keeps”, Not Avail

  8 Copy quote

• Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

  Mary McCarthy

  Men, Literature, Apes

  Mary McCarthy (2017). “Mary McCarthy: Novels 1963-1979”, p.414, Library of America

  7 Copy quote

• What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake.

  Mary McCarthy

  Real, Cake, Plums

  10 Copy quote

• Illiteracy at the poverty level (mainly a matter of bad grammar) does not alarm me nearly as much as the illiteracy of the well-to-do.

  Mary McCarthy

  Alarms, Doe, Levels

  Mary McCarthy (1985). “Occasional prose”, Harcourt

  11 Copy quote

• Understanding is often a prelude to forgiveness, but they are not the same, and we often forgive what we cannot understand (seeing nothing else to do) and understand what we cannot pardon.

  Mary McCarthy

  Political, Understanding, Forgiving

  20 Copy quote

• It is impossible, except for theologians, to conceive of a world-wide scandal or a universe-wide scandal; the proof of this is the way people have settled down to living with nuclear fission, radiation poisoning, hydrogen bombs, satellites, and space rockets.

  Mary McCarthy

  Space, Hydrogen Bomb, People

  Mary McCarthy (1964). “The humanist in the bathtub”

  6 Copy quote

• Laughter is the great antidote for self-pity, maybe a specific for the malady, yet probably it does tend to dry one's feelings out a little, as if by exposing them to a vigorous wind.

  Mary McCarthy

  Laughter, Self, Wind

  5 Copy quote

• The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends.

  Mary McCarthy

  Friends, Believe, People

  Mary McCarthy (1981). “The hounds of summer and other stories: Mary McCarthy's short fiction”

  4 Copy quote

• For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.

  Mary McCarthy

  Lonely, Race, Imagination

  4 Copy quote

• I was going to get myself recognized at any price. If I could not win fame by goodness, I was ready to do it by badness.

  Mary McCarthy

  Winning, Fame, Goodness

  4 Copy quote

• Be truthful... and pay attention. I would also recommend the avoidance of credit cards.

  Mary McCarthy

  Advice, Cards, Attention

  4 Copy quote

• The present can try to bury the past, an operation that is most atrocious when it is most successful.

  Mary McCarthy

  Successful, Past, Trying

  4 Copy quote

• What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?

  Mary McCarthy

  Falling In Love, Fall, Use

  4 Copy quote

• Making love, we are all more alike than we are when we are talking or acting.

  Mary McCarthy

  Sex, Talking, Making Love

  Mary McCarthy (1964). “The humanist in the bathtub”

  4 Copy quote

• The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around.

  Mary McCarthy

  Believe, Giving, Historical

  Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

  53 Copy quote

• it's easier to forgive your enemies than to forgive your friends.

  Mary McCarthy

  Forgiveness, Forgiving, Enemy

  5 Copy quote

• An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question.

  Mary McCarthy

  Justice, Atmosphere, Way

  11 Copy quote

• For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.

  Mary McCarthy

  Strong, Self, Rebel

  17 Copy quote

• When you have committed an action that you cannot bear to think about, that causes you to writhe in retrospect, do not seek to evade the memory: make yourself relive it, confront it repeatedly over and over, till finally, you will discover, through sheer repetition it loses its power to pain you. It works, I guarantee you, this sure-fire guilt-eradicator, like a homeopathic medicine - like in small doses applied to like. It works, but I am not sure that it is a good thing.

  Mary McCarthy

  Pain, Memories, Thinking

  "How I Grew". Book by Mary McCarthy, 1987.

  4 Copy quote

• Others are to us like the characters in fiction, eternal and incorrigible; the surprises they give us turn out in the end to have been predictable and unexpected variations on the theme of being themselves.

  Mary McCarthy

  Character, Giving, Personality

  Mary McCarthy (1964). “The Humanist in the Bathtub”

  4 Copy quote

• Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist.

  Mary McCarthy

  Together, Poison, Pairs

  Mary McCarthy (1981). “The hounds of summer and other stories: Mary McCarthy's short fiction”

  4 Copy quote

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