Mary McCarthy Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question.

  Mary McCarthy

  Justice, Atmosphere, Way

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• Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist.

  Mary McCarthy

  Together, Poison, Pairs

  Mary McCarthy (1981). “The hounds of summer and other stories: Mary McCarthy's short fiction”

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• People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

  Mary McCarthy

  Forgiveness, Children, Women

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

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• Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility.

  Mary McCarthy

  Race, Racism, Evil

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

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• ... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.

  Mary McCarthy

  Average, Catholic, Religion

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• I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that - how to express this - you really must make the self.

  Mary McCarthy

  Thinking, Self, Literature

  Interview with Elisabeth Niebuhr (March 1961) in "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Second Series", 1963.

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• The horror of Gandhi's murder lies not in the political motives behind it or in its consequences for Indian policy or for the future of non-violence; the horror lies simply in the fact that any man could look into the face of this extraordinary person and deliberately pull a trigger.

  Mary McCarthy

  Lying, Men, Extraordinary Person

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• Europeans used to say Americans were puritanical. Then they discovered that we were not puritans. So now they say that we are obsessed with sex.

  Mary McCarthy

  Sex, Puritan, Obsessed

  "Lady with a Switchblade". Life Magazine, September 20, 1963.

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• 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.

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• The fact is that gardening, more than most of our other activities except sometimes love-making, confronts us with the inexplicable.

  Mary McCarthy

  Gardening, Facts, Sometimes

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• The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.

  Mary McCarthy

  Art, Brother, People

  "Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue". Mary McCarthy, The Reporter Magazine, July 1950.

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• Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it.

  Mary McCarthy

  Action, Reason, Cowardice

  Mary McCarthy (2017). “Mary McCarthy: Novels 1963-1979”, p.409, Library of America

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• Morality did not keep well; it required stable conditions; it was costly; it was subject to variations, and the market for it was uncertain.

  Mary McCarthy

  Variation, Morality, Uncertain

  Mary McCarthy (2013). “The Oasis: A Novel”, p.93, Melville House

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• As subjects, we all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story. We cannot believe that it is finished, that we are 'finished,' even though we may say so; we expect another chapter, another installment, tomorrow or next week.

  Mary McCarthy

  Believe, Hero, Next Week

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

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• If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything.

  Mary McCarthy

  Mean, Voice, Style

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• The comic element is the incorrigible element in every human being; the capacity to learn, from experience or instruction, is what is forbidden to all comic creations and to what is comic in you and me.

  Mary McCarthy

  Elements, Comedy, Creation

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

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• When an American heiress wants to buy a man, she at once crosses the Atlantic. The only really materialistic people I have ever met have been Europeans.

  Mary McCarthy

  Men, People, Literature

  On the Contrary (1961) "America the Beautiful"

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• it came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality, the sole form of intellectuality of which they were capable. It represented, in a rudimentary way, the ability to make categories, to generalize.

  Mary McCarthy

  Stupid, Lunch, People

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

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• ...the tourist Venice is Venice.

  Mary McCarthy

  Venice, Tourists

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• Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a 'work' of man.

  Mary McCarthy

  Men, Identity, Doe

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

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• Venice is the worlds unconscious: a misers glittering hoard, guarded by a Beast whose eyes are made of white agate, and by a saint who is really a prince who has just slain a dragon.

  Mary McCarthy

  Eye, Dragons, White

  Mary McCarthy (1956). “Venice observed”

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• The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it were a myth for the credulous- poets and honeymooners.

  Mary McCarthy

  Cities, Venice, Doubt

  Mary McCarthy (1956). “Venice observed”

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• The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist.

  Mary McCarthy

  Passion, Novelists, Facts

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

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• love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel.

  Mary McCarthy

  Passion, Ordinary, Common

  Mary McCarthy (2002). “A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays”, New York Review of Books

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• In morals as in politics anarchy is not for the weak.

  Mary McCarthy

  Anarchy, Moral, Weak

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

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