Marya Mannes Quotes

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.

Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive.

All great lovers are articulate, and verbal seduction is the surest road to actual seduction.

Euthanasia ... is simply to be able to die with dignity at a moment when life is devoid of it.

The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other.

People on horses look better than they are. People in cars look worse than they are.

The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained. By the age of fifty you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth.

In our society those who are in reality superior in intelligence can be accepted by their fellows only if they pretend they are not.

The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason.

The barbarian weapon is fission: the splitting asunder. It has been perfected for death. Our only weapon is fusion: an imperfect process still, though designed for life.

Money is not an aphrodisiac: the desire it may kindle in the female eye is more for the cash than the carrier.

Borders are scratched across the hearts of men By strangers with a calm, judicial pen, And when the borders bleed we watch with dread The lines of ink across the map turn red.

The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality.

It's never what you say, but how you make it sound sincere.

If American men are obsessed with money, American women are obsessed with weight. The men talk of gain, the women talk of loss, and I do not know which talk is the more boring.

Ribbons a-flutter and orchids a-tremble, Yearly the vigilant Daughters assemble, Affirming in fervid and firm resolutions Their permanent veto on all revolutions.

Timing and arrogance are decisive factors in the successful use of talent.

The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit.

We pity or condemn the communist peoples of the world for being bound in the chains of doctrine. So are we. Our doctrine runs as follows: Our Way is the Only Way.

It is privilege of living to be acutely, agonizingly conscious of the moment that is always present and always passing.

Generosity with strings is not generosity: it is a deal.

Women are repeatedly accused of taking things personally. I cannot see any other honest way of taking them.

To know the good is to react against the bad. Indifference is the mark of deprivation.

You cannot know what you do not feel.

It is not enough to show people how to live better; there is a mandate for any group with enormous powers of communication to show people how to be better.

Is there no end to this escalation of desire?

Advertisers in general bear a large part of the responsibility for the deep feelings of inadequacy that drive women to psychiatrists, pills, or the bottle.

Surely the hold of great music on the listener is precisely this: that the listener is made whole; and at the same time part of an image of infinite grace and grandeur which is creation.

I don't think the advertisers have any real idea of their power not only to reflect but to mould society.

The faucet leak, and learn to leave them so.

Flirtation is merely an expression of considered desire coupled with an admission of its impracticability.

fear has always been a diminisher of life. Whether bred in the bogs of superstition or clothed in the brocades of dogma and ritual, the specter of death has reduced the living to supplicants, powerless.

Lie down and listen to the crabgrass grow.

You mix the affluence of the white and the poverty of the black and you do not get a civilized society. Integration on an equal level is one thing. Mixing on an unequal level is another.

One is as one is, and the love that can't encompass both is a poor sort of love.

Good-fellowship, unflagging, is the prime requisite for success in our society, and the man or woman who smiles only for reasons of humor or pleasure is a deviate.

Self-restraint may be alien to the human temperament, but humanity without restraint will dig its own grave.

the incredible new medical technology has made it possible for highly disciplined teams of surgeons ... to keep stricken organisms alive even if the brain is irretrievably damaged or lung and heart incapable of functioning without mechanical help. Now it is not dust to dust, but human to vegetable.

The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained.

You cannot throw words like heroism and sacrifice and nobility and honor away without abandoning the qualities they express.

Hoary idea, in any case, expecting a woman to surrender her name to her husband's in exchange for his. Why? Would any man submerge his identity and heritage to the woman he wed?

To be at peace with self, to find company and nourishment in self-this would be the test of the free and productive psyche.

When women can cherish the vulnerability of men as much as men can exult in the strength of women, a new breed could lift a ruinous yoke from both.

All wars derive from lack of empathy: the incapacity of one to understand and accept the likeness or difference of another. Whether in nations or the encounters of race and sex, competition then replaces compassion, subjection excludes mutuality.

No man is a Christian who cheats his fellows, perverts the truth, or speaks of a "clean bomb" yet he will be the first to make public his faith in God.

There is nothing harder to come by than detachment and solitude; and nothing more important.

certain kinds of people become Republicans and certain kinds of people become Democrats, and ... it's more than a matter of party affiliation. It's a way of thinking and being.

Everybody likes to see somebody else get caught for the vices practiced by themselves.

The right to choose death when life no longer holds meaning is not only the next liberation but the last human right.

the overwhelming majority of people who are engaged in the processes of thought and expression are Democrats because the essence of thought is exploration and diversity and change. It's impossible to have vision in art or government without risk, or the boldness and courage which produce risk. And this - in spite of what they call modern Republicanism - is the antithesis of true Republican thinking.