Phyllis McGinley Quotes

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Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing, peace is the measure.

Phyllis McGinley

Peace, Healing, Body

44 Copy quote
Those wearing Tolerance for a label call other views intolerable.

Phyllis McGinley

Views, Tolerance, Labels

24 Copy quote
A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.

Phyllis McGinley

Depression, Hobbies, Bad Mood

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The wonderful thing about saints is that they were human. They lost their tempers, got hungry, scolded God, were egotistical or impatient in their turns, made mistakes and regretted them. Still they went on doggedly blundering toward heaven.

Phyllis McGinley

Mistake, Commitment, Heaven

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Pressed for rules and verities, All i recolelct are these: Feed a cold and starve a fever. Argue with no true believer. Think-too-long is never-act. Scratch a myth and find a fact.

Phyllis McGinley

Women, Thinking, Long

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God know that a mother need fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul.

Phyllis McGinley

Mom, Mother, Brave

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Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.

Phyllis McGinley

Broken Heart, Silence, Troubled Relationship

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Women are the fulfilled sex. Through our children we are able to produce our own immortality, so we lack that divine restlessness which sends men charging off in pursuit of fortune or fame or an imagined Utopia. That is why we number so few geniuses among us. The wholesome oyster wears no pearl, the healthy whale no ambergris, and as long as we can keep on adding to the race, we harbor a sort of health within ourselves.

Phyllis McGinley

Sex, Children, Women

Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

10 Copy quote
How happy is the Optimist / To whom life shows its sunny side / His horse may lose, his ship may list, / But he always sees the funny side.

Phyllis McGinley

Horse, Optimism, May

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Stir the eggnog, lift the toddy, Happy New Year everybody.

Phyllis McGinley

New Year, Years, Drinking Toast

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Children from ten to twenty don't want to be understood. Their whole ambition is to feel strange and alien and misinterpreted so that they can live austerely in some stone tower of adolescence, their privacies unviolated.

Phyllis McGinley

Children, Ambition, Twenties

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The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.

Phyllis McGinley

Garden, Desire, Doe

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This is the gist of what I know: Give advice and buy a foe.

Phyllis McGinley

Giving, Advice, Self Control

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The East is the hearthside of America. Like any home, therefore, it has the defects of its virtues. Because it is a long-lived-inhouse, it bursts its seams, is inconvenient, needs constant refurbishing. And some of the family resources have been spent. To attain the privacy that grown-up people find so desirable, Easterners live a harder life than people elsewhere. Today it is we and not the frontiersman who must be rugged to survive.

Phyllis McGinley

Home, Heart, America

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Seventy is wormwood, Seventy is gall But its better to be seventy, Than not alive at all.

Phyllis McGinley

Alive, Wormwood, Seventies

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A bookworm in bed with a new novel and a good reading lamp is as much prepared for pleasure as a pretty girl at a college dance.

Phyllis McGinley

Girl, Reading, College

Phyllis McGinley (1959). “the Province of the Heart”

3 Copy quote
In spring when maple buds are red,
We turn the clock an hour ahead;
Which means, each April that arrives,
We lose an hour out of our lives.

Who cares? When autumn birds in flocks
Fly southward, back we turn the clocks,
And so regain a lovely thing
That missing hour we lost in spring.

Phyllis McGinley

Spring, Mean, Autumn

Phyllis McGinley, “Daylight Savings Time”

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Wherever conversation's flowing, / Why must I feel it falls on me / To keep things going?

Phyllis McGinley

Fall, Conversation, Feels

Phyllis McGinley, “Reflections At Dawn”

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A mother's hardest to forgive. Life is the fruit she longs to hand you Ripe on a plate. And while you live, Relentlessly she understands you.

Phyllis McGinley

Mothers Day, Mom, Hands

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Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy

Phyllis McGinley

Life, Spices, Compromise

Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

5 Copy quote
In a successful marriage, there is no such thing as one's way. There is only the way of both, only the bumpy, dusty, difficult, but always mutual path.

Phyllis McGinley

Marriage, Successful, Way

Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

3 Copy quote
The mass of men live lives of quiet exasperation.

Phyllis McGinley

Live Life, Men, Quiet

Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

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Say what you will, making marriage work is a woman's business. The institution was invented to do her homage; it was contrived for her protection. Unless she accepts it as such --as a beautiful, bountiful, but quite unequal association --the going will be hard indeed.

Phyllis McGinley

Marriage, Beautiful, Association

Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

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Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.

Phyllis McGinley

Children, Hug, Praise

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Scratch any father, you find / Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, / Believing change is a threat.

Phyllis McGinley

Father, Believe, Qualms About

Phyllis McGinley (1968). “Wonders and surprises: a collection of poems”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

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Born: March 21, 1905
Died: February 22, 1978
Occupation: Author
Cite this Page: Citation

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