Quotes by Mignon McLaughlin
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to weave.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Vanity, revenge, loneliness, boredom, all apply: lust is one of the least of the reasons for promiscuity.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
We catch frightful glimpses of ourselves in the hostile eyes of others.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
There are whole years for which I hope I'll never be cross-examined, for I could not give an alibi.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
People are like birds: on the wing, all beautiful; up close, all beady little eyes.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Men prefer brief praise, pitched high; women are satisfied with praise in a lower key, just so it goes on and on.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
The two main hazards of psychoanalysis: that it might fail, and that if it succeeds, you'll never be able to forgive yourself for all those wasted years.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
I often pray, though I'm not really sure Anyone's listening; and I phrase it carefully, just in case He's literary.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Luck: when your burst of energy doesn't run afoul of someone else's.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
We wake in the night, to stereophonic silence.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Some women love only what they can hold in their arms; others, only what they can't.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Acedia is not in every dictionary; just in every heart.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Nostalgia for what we have lost is more bearable than nostalgia for what we have never had...
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
We are keenly aware of the faults of our friends, but if they like us enough it doesn't matter.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Philosophy teaches a man that he can't take it with him; taxes teach him he can't leave it behind either.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
We always prefer war on our own terms to peace on someone else's.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
If you're a gifted flirt, talking about the price of eggs will do as well as any other subject.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Every society honors its live conformists, and its dead troublemakers.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
There's an awful lot of blood around that water is thicker than.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
A parent who has never apologized to his children is a monster. If he's always apologizing, his children are monsters.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Spiritual sloth, or acedia, was known as The Sin of the Middle Ages. It's the sin of my middle age, too.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
The ideal home: big enough for you to hear the children, but not very well.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Your children vividly remember every unkind thing you ever did to them, plus a few you really didn't.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Your children tell you casually years later what it would have killed you with worry to know at the time.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
When hope is hungry, everything feeds it.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Whenever we safely land in a plane, we promise God a little something.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Always live up to your standards - by lowering them, if necessary.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Spring, summer, and fall fill us with hope; winter alone reminds us of the human condition.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
If you hate your lot but wouldn't trade it, it's not your lot you hate.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn't either.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Be glad that you're greedy; the national economy would collapse if you weren't.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Good-looking girls break hearts, and goodhearted girls mend them.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth: we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
It upsets women to be, or not to be, stared at hungrily.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Love requires a willingness to die; marriage, a willingness to live.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive - perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
The three horrors of modern life - talk without meaning, desire without love, work without satisfaction.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
With men, as with women, the main struggle is between vanity and comfort; but with men, comfort often wins.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
What we forgive too freely doesn't stay forgiven.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Life is a mixed blessing, which we vainly try to unmix.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
People find it hard to be both comic and serious, though life manages it easily enough.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Women go to beauty parlors for the unmussed look men hate.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
We have to call it "freedom": who'd want to die for "a lesser tyranny"?
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
You can't truthfully explain your smallest action without fully revealing your character.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Despair is anger with no place to go.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
As we grow older, our capacity for enjoyment shrinks, but not our appetite for it.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
If you have to do it every day, for God's sake learn to do it well.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
We work for praise, and dawdle once we have it.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
I wish I'd said it first, and I don't even know who did: The only problems that money can solve are money problems.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Women flirt to keep their stock high, men to get somewhere.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
A woman asks little of love: only that she be able to feel like a heroine.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Most of us can easily do two things at once; what's all but impossible is to do one thing at once.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
I've been hiding from God, and I'm appalled to find how easy it is.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Mumps, measles, and puppy love are terrible after twenty.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Women are afraid of mice and of murder, and of very little in between.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Says the rude child: "No, I won't do it." Says the courteous grown-up: "Yes, I won't do it."
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Men who don't like girls with brains don't like girls.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Many of us go through life feeling as an actor might feel who does not like his part, and does not believe in the play.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Without enthusiasm, virtue functions not at all, and vice only poorly.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Money is much more exciting than anything it buys.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Anything you lose automatically doubles in value.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
The soul may sleep and the body still be happy, but only in youth.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
We are like people with short-term leases on summer cottages; we can never seem to make our provisions come out even with our stay.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
All women are basically in competition with each other for a handful of eligible men.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
A new wound makes all the old ones ache again.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Self-confidence grows on trees, in other people's orchards.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
There are now electrical appliances with the main unit so sealed in that it cannot be got at for repair. There have always been human beings like that.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Women are the right age for just a few years; men, for most of their lives.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
What a shame that allowances have to stop with the teens: both those that are paid to us and those that are made for us.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
There's nothing wrong with most men's egos that the kowtowing of a headwaiter can't cure.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Love is often gentle, desire always a rage.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
To smoke or not to smoke: I can make of either a life-work.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Suburb: a place that isn't city, isn't country, and isn't tolerable.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Women gather together to wear silly hats, eat dainty food, and forget how unresponsive their husbands are. Men gather to talk sports, eat heavy food, and forget how demanding their wives are. Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel: expensive, but worth it.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Don't fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever, or not at all.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
The time to begin most things is ten years ago.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Comfort, or revelation; God owes us one of these, but surely not both.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Most of our diversions do not so much delay death as accustom us to it.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
If it came true, it wasn't much of a dream.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
There's something in every atheist, itching to believe, and something in every believer, itching to doubt.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Minor vices lead to major ones, but minor virtues stay put.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Many who would not take the last cookie would take the last lifeboat.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
True remorse is never just a regret over consequence; it is a regret over motive.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
A woman's mink coat represents the sacrifice of a lot of little animals, including her husband.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
How tired God must be of guilt and loneliness, for that is all we ever bring to Him.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
We're all born brave, trusting, and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
There is always some specific moment when we realize our youth is gone; but years after, we know it was much later.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Few of us could bear to have ourselves for neighbors.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
For the happiest life, rigorously plan your days, leave your nights open to chance.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Hot dogs always seem better out than at home; so do French-fried potatoes; so do your children.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
God is less careful than General Motors, for He floods the world with factory rejects.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
When women feel they have learned to forgive their mothers - and men, their fathers - all it usually means is that they've decided to allow themselves the same kind of behavior.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
They threaten me with lung cancer, and still I smoke and smoke. If they'd only threaten me with hard work, I might stop.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
The chief reason for drinking is the desire to behave in a certain way, and to be able to blame it on alcohol.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Neurosis is no worse than a bad cold; you ache all over, and it's made you a mess, but you won't die from it.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
How strange that the young should always think the world is against them - when in fact that is the only time it is for them.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Age is a slowing down of everything except fear.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Courage can't see around corners, but goes around them anyway.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
It's wonderful to watch a pretty woman with character grow beautiful.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
We are seldom happy with what we now have, but would go to pieces if we lost any part of it.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Don't be yourself - be someone a little nicer.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Every creatures stalks some other, and catches it, and is caught.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
All love is probationary, a fact which frightens women and exhilarates men.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Desire creates havoc when it is the only thing between two people, or when it is what's missing.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Pity all newlyweds. She cooks something nice for him, and he brings her flowers, and they kiss and think: How easy marriage is.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Some marriages break up, and some do not, and in our world you can usually explain the former better than the latter.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
A woman ought to look up to her husband, if only a half-inch.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Too much money is as demoralizing as too little, and there's no such thing as exactly enough.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
There are a handful of people whom money won't spoil, and we count ourselves among them.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
My religious position: I think that God could do a lot better, and I'm willing to give Him the chance.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Desire is in men a hunger, in women only an appetite.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.
Link to Quote
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes