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.

  73 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

• 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

• 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

  6 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• I shall never send for a priest or recite an Act of Contrition in my last moments. I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.

  Mary McCarthy

  Work Out, Soul, Mind

  0 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

• You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.

  Mary McCarthy

  Best Love, Sex, Force

  The Group ch. 2 (1954)

  5 Copy quote

• Laughter is the great antidote for self-pity, maybe a specific for the malady, yet probably it does tend to dry one's feelings out a little, as if by exposing them to a vigorous wind.

  Mary McCarthy

  Laughter, Self, Wind

  0 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

• 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

• It is impossible, except for theologians, to conceive of a world-wide scandal or a universe-wide scandal; the proof of this is the way people have settled down to living with nuclear fission, radiation poisoning, hydrogen bombs, satellites, and space rockets.

  Mary McCarthy

  Space, Hydrogen Bomb, People

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

  1 Copy quote

• Understanding is often a prelude to forgiveness, but they are not the same, and we often forgive what we cannot understand (seeing nothing else to do) and understand what we cannot pardon.

  Mary McCarthy

  Political, Understanding, Forgiving

  15 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

• There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.

  Mary McCarthy

  Happiness, Truth, Perception

  On the Contrary (1961) "Vita Activa"

  2 Copy quote

• Congress-these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage.

  Mary McCarthy

  Political, Speech, Fancy

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

  12 Copy quote

• Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother's nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against Protestant ascendancy. ...The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others.

  Mary McCarthy

  Christian, Jesus, War

  "Memories of a Catholic Girlhood". Book by Mary McCarthy, 1957.

  6 Copy quote

• Once the state is looked upon as the source of rights, rather than their bound protector, freedom becomes conditional on the pleasure of the state.

  Mary McCarthy

  Rights, Pleasure, States

  Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

  0 Copy quote

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