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.

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

  Mary McCarthy

  Funny, Lying, Writing

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

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• 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

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• We are the hero of our own story.

  Mary McCarthy

  Inspirational Life, Self Esteem, Hero

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

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• 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

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• 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)

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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”

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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"

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

  Mary McCarthy

  Real, Cake, Plums

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• In violence, we forget who we are

  Mary McCarthy

  War, Domestic Violence, Who We Are

  On the Contrary (1961) "Characters in Fiction "

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• ... it was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the words ofthe Mass and the litanies and the old Latin hymns, in the Easter lilies around the altar, rosaries, ornamented prayer books, votive lamps, holy cards stamped in gold and decorated with flower wreaths and a saint's picture.

  Mary McCarthy

  Easter, Prayer, Latin

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• Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

  Mary McCarthy

  Men, Literature, Apes

  Mary McCarthy (2017). “Mary McCarthy: Novels 1963-1979”, p.414, Library of America

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• 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”

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• 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)

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• 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”

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

  Mary McCarthy

  Witty, Eye, Past

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

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• 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

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• The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.

  Mary McCarthy

  Finals, Literature, Plagiarism

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