Mary McCarthy Quotes

Quotes about:

• We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

  Mary McCarthy

  Life, Hero, Positive Attitude

  "Characters in Fiction". Partisan Review, March/April 1961.

  72 Copy quote

• Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."

  Mary McCarthy

  Funny, Lying, Writing

  Dick Cavett Show (television program), Jan. 1980.

  14 Copy quote

• We are the hero of our own story.

  Mary McCarthy

  Inspirational Life, Self Esteem, Hero

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

  12 Copy quote

• most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know; it made them feel ignorant.

  Mary McCarthy

  Education, Learning, People

  Mary McCarthy (2017). “Mary McCarthy: Novels 1963-1979”, p.397, Library of America

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  3 Copy quote

• If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it.

  Mary McCarthy

  Evil, Want, Masters

  Mary McCarthy (2017). “Mary McCarthy: Novels 1963-1979”, p.441, Library of America

  0 Copy quote

• Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

  Mary McCarthy

  Liberty, Libertarian, Modern

  "The Vita Activa". The New Yorker, October 18, 1958.

  14 Copy quote

• The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep.

  Mary McCarthy

  Good Night, Selfish, Sleep

  11 Copy quote

• If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.

  Mary McCarthy

  Decision, Bad Decision, Realistic

  On the Contrary "The American Realist Playwrights" (1961)

  11 Copy quote

• Feminism is ridiculous. Feminists are silly idealists who want to be on top. There is no real equality in sexual relationships - someone always wins.

  Mary McCarthy

  Real, Silly, Winning

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

• You know what my favourite quotation is?.. It's from Chaucer... Criseyde says it, "I am myne owene woman, wel at ese."

  Mary McCarthy

  Favourite, Chaucer, Knows

  "The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt". Short story by ary McCarthy, first published in "Partisan Review", 1941.

  6 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

  6 Copy quote

• Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

  Mary McCarthy

  Witty, Eye, Past

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

  26 Copy quote

• From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people.

  Mary McCarthy

  People, Good People, Driven

  Mary McCarthy (2011). “Memories Of A Catholic Girlhood”, p.15, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard.

  Mary McCarthy

  Life, Europe, Careers

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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Mary McCarthy

  Real, Cake, Plums

  4 Copy quote

• In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

  Mary McCarthy

  Science, Equality, Literature

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

  3 Copy quote

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

  Mary McCarthy

  Strong, Self, Rebel

  13 Copy quote

• Yet friendship, I believe, is essential to intellectuals. It is probably the growth hormone the mind requires as it begins its activity of producing and exchanging ideas. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. In the course of my history, not love or marriage so much as friendship has promoted growth.

  Mary McCarthy

  Friendship, Believe, Growth Hormones

  0 Copy quote

• With extramarital courtship, the deception was prolonged where it had been ephemeral, necessary where it had been frivolous, conspiratorial where it had been lonely.

  Mary McCarthy

  Lonely, Deception, Ephemeral

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

  0 Copy quote

• Our language, once homely and colloquial, seeks to aggrandize our meanest activities with polysyllabic terms or it retreats from frankness into a stammering verbosity.

  Mary McCarthy

  Retreat, Language, Stammering

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

  1 Copy quote

• The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly.

  Mary McCarthy

  Real, Venice, Essentials

  Mary McCarthy (1956). “Venice observed”

  3 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”

  0 Copy quote

• Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.

  Mary McCarthy

  Responsibility, Law, Judging

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

  0 Copy quote

• The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is the fact that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable. ... No nation with any sense of material well-being would endure the food we eat, the cramped apartments we live in, the noise, the traffic, the crowded subways and buses. American life, in large cities, at any rate, is a perpetual assault on the senses and the nerves.

  Mary McCarthy

  Life, Character, Cities

  "On the contrary".

  0 Copy quote

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