Phyllis McGinley Quotes

A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.

Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade and to give men their freedom.

Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but pass?. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.

Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing, peace is the measure.

Those wearing Tolerance for a label call other views intolerable.

The wonderful thing about saints is that they were human. They lost their tempers, got hungry, scolded God, were egotistical or impatient in their turns, made mistakes and regretted them. Still they went on doggedly blundering toward heaven.

A mother's hardest to forgive. Life is the fruit she longs to hand you Ripe on a plate. And while you live, Relentlessly she understands you.

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.

Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.

Seventy is wormwood, Seventy is gall But its better to be seventy, Than not alive at all.

Borrow my umbrellas, my clothes, my money, and I will likely not think of them again. But borrow my books and I will be on your track like a bloodhound until they are returned.

Of course we women gossip on occasion. But our appetite for it is not as avid as a man s. It is in the boys gyms, the college fraternity houses, the club locker rooms, the paneled offices of business that gossip reaches its luxuriant flower.

In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

Frigidity is largely nonsense. It is this generation's catchword, one only vaguely understood and constantly misused. Frigid women are few. There is a host of diffident and slow-ripening ones.

Stir the eggnog, lift the toddy, Happy New Year everybody.

Women are the fulfilled sex. Through our children we are able to produce our own immortality, so we lack that divine restlessness which sends men charging off in pursuit of fortune or fame or an imagined Utopia. That is why we number so few geniuses among us. The wholesome oyster wears no pearl, the healthy whale no ambergris, and as long as we can keep on adding to the race, we harbor a sort of health within ourselves.

This is the gist of what I know: Give advice and buy a foe.

The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.

In spring when maple buds are red, We turn the clock an hour ahead; Which means, each April that arrives, We lose an hour out of our lives. Who cares? When autumn birds in flocks Fly southward, back we turn the clocks, And so regain a lovely thing That missing hour we lost in spring.

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

Who could deny that privacy is a jewel? It has always been the mark of privilege, the distinguishing feature of a truly urbane culture. Out of the cave, the tribal teepee, the pueblo, the community fortress, man emerged to build himself a house of his own with a shelter in it for himself and his diversions. Every age has seen it so. The poor might have to huddle together in cities for need's sake, and the frontiersman cling to his neighbors for the sake of protection. But in each civilization, as it advanced, those who could afford it chose the luxury of a withdrawing-place.

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

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.

God know that a mother need fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul.

The East is the hearthside of America. Like any home, therefore, it has the defects of its virtues. Because it is a long-lived-inhouse, it bursts its seams, is inconvenient, needs constant refurbishing. And some of the family resources have been spent. To attain the privacy that grown-up people find so desirable, Easterners live a harder life than people elsewhere. Today it is we and not the frontiersman who must be rugged to survive.

Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with one man.

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.

Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy

Of the small gifts of heaven, / It seems to me a more than equal share / At birth was given / To girls with curly hair.

How happy is the Optimist / To whom life shows its sunny side / His horse may lose, his ship may list, / But he always sees the funny side.

Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.

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

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.

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.

A bookworm in bed with a new novel and a good reading lamp is as much prepared for pleasure as a pretty girl at a college dance.

In a successful marriage, there is no such thing as one's way. There is only the way of both, only the bumpy, dusty, difficult, but always mutual path.

Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.

I sing Connecticut, her charms / Of rivers, orchards, blossoming ridges. / I sing her gardens, fences, farms, / Spiders and midges.

Gardening has compensations out of all proportion to its goals. It is creation in the pure sense.

Nothing fails like success; nothing is so defeated as yesterday's triumphant Cause.

The system - the American one, at least - is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet.

For the hearts of nurses are solid gold, / But their heels are flat and their hands are cold, / And their voices lilt with a lilt that's falser / Than the smile of an exhibition waltzer. / Yes, nurses can cure you, nurses restore you, / But nurses are bound that they do things for you.

Aunts are discreet, a little shy / By instinct. They forbear to pry.

Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.

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

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.

Wherever conversation's flowing, / Why must I feel it falls on me / To keep things going?

Oh, princes thrive on caviar, the poor on whey and curds, / And politicians, I infer, must eat their windy words. / It's crusts that feed the virtuous, it's cake that comforts sinners, / But writers live on bread and praise at Literary Dinners.

Men can't be trusted with pruning shears any more than they can be trusted with the grocery money in a delicatessen . . . They are like boys with new pocket knives who will not stop whittling.

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.