Phyllis McGinley Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Reading, Poetry, Pastime

  4 Copy quote

• Rain is my lover, my apple strudel. / It haunts my heels like a pedigreed poodle. / Beyond the seas or across the nation, / It follows me faithful on every vacation.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Travel, Rain, Vacation

  6 Copy quote

• Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Children, Hug, Praise

  6 Copy quote

• I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Age, Doctrine, Fiction

  Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

  4 Copy quote

• Scratch any father, you find / Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, / Believing change is a threat.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Father, Believe, Qualms About

  Phyllis McGinley (1968). “Wonders and surprises: a collection of poems”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

  8 Copy quote

• The thing to remember about fathers is, they're men. A girl has to keep it in mind: They are dragon seekers, bent on improbable rescues. Scratch any father, you find someone chock - full of qualms and romantic terrors, believing change is a threat - like your first shoes with heels on, like your first bicycle I took such months to get.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Girl, Daughter, Father

  Phyllis McGinley (1968). “Wonders and surprises: a collection of poems”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

  12 Copy quote

• It is the leisured, I have noticed, who rebel the most at an interruption of routine.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Rebel, Routine, Interruptions

  Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

  4 Copy quote

• A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can't fold a paper in a crowded train.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Baby, Gentleman, Brain

  Phyllis McGinley (1934). “On the contrary”

  8 Copy quote

• I'm a middle-bracket person with a middle-bracket spouse / And we live together gaily in a middle-bracket house. / We've a fair-to-middlin' family; we take the middle view; / So we're manna sent from heaven to internal revenue.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Views, Heaven, House

  4 Copy quote

• Ah, snug lie those that slumber Beneath Conviction's roof. Their floors are sturdy lumber, Their windows weatherproof. But I sleep cold forever And cold sleep all my kind, For I was born to shiver In the draft from an open mind.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Lying, Sleep, Forever

  4 Copy quote

• People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.

  Phyllis McGinley

  People, Sick, Immature

  Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

  7 Copy quote

• God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Mother, Children, Women

  7 Copy quote

• Sons do not need you. They are always out of your reach, Walking strange waters.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Son, Water, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• Behind every myth lies a truth; beyond every legend is reality, as radiant (sometimes as chilling) as the story itself.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Lying, Reality, Stories

  5 Copy quote

• Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same. Gossip is the tool of the poet, the shop-talk of the scientist, and the consolation of the housewife, wit, tycoon and intellectual. It begins in the nursery and ends when speech is past.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Love, Past, Race

  8 Copy quote

• Women are not men's equals in anything except responsibility. We are not their inferiors, either, or even their superiors. We are quite simply different races.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Responsibility, Men, Race

  Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

  6 Copy quote

• When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Mind, Atheism, Prejudice

  9 Copy quote

• Children are forced to live very rapidly in order to live at all. They are given only a few years in which to learn hundreds of thousands of things about life and the planet and themselves.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Children, Helping Others, Order

  4 Copy quote

• Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!

  Phyllis McGinley

  Christmas, Dimes, Nickels

  Phyllis McGinley (1946). “Stones from a glass house: new poems by Phyllis McGinley”, Viking Press

  12 Copy quote

• What in me is pure conviction is simple prejudice in you.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Simple, Prejudice, Conviction

  Phyllis McGinley (1951). “A Short Walk from the Station”

  4 Copy quote

• Kindness is a virtue neither modern nor urban. One almost unlearns it in a city. Towns have their own beatitude; they are not unfriendly; they offer a vast and solacing anonymity or an equally vast and solacing gregariousness. But one needs a neighbor on whom to practice compassion.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Kindness, Compassion, Practice

  Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

  4 Copy quote

• History must always be taken with a grain of salt. It is, after all, not a science but an art.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Art, Taken, History

  Phyllis McGinley, Gerald Durrell (1969). “Birds, beasts, and relatives”, Viking Adult

  4 Copy quote

• To be a housewife is a difficult, a wrenching, sometimes an ungrateful job if it is looked on only as a job. Regarded as a profession, it is the noblest as it is the most ancient of the catalogue. Let none persuade us differently or the world is lost indeed.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Jobs, Ungrateful, World

  Phyllis McGinley (1965). “Sixpence in Her Shoe”

  20 Copy quote

• The knowingness of little girls, is hidden underneath their curls.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Girl, Mom, Daughter

  Phyllis McGinley (1951). “A Short Walk from the Station”

  11 Copy quote

• A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Now And Then, Trash, Reader

  4 Copy quote

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