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

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  19 Copy quote

• 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

• 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”

  6 Copy quote

• A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Depression, Hobbies, Bad Mood

  143 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

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

  Phyllis McGinley

  Garden, Desire, Doe

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

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

  Phyllis McGinley

  New Year, Years, Drinking Toast

  10 Copy quote

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

  Phyllis McGinley

  Giving, Advice, Self Control

  8 Copy quote

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

  Phyllis McGinley

  Broken Heart, Silence, Troubled Relationship

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

• When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Mind, Atheism, Prejudice

  5 Copy quote

• I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Age, Doctrine, Fiction

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

  0 Copy quote

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

  Phyllis McGinley

  Alive, Wormwood, Seventies

  13 Copy quote

• The East is a montage. It is old and it is young, very green in summer, very white in winter, gregarious, withdrawn and at once both sophisticated and provincial.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Summer, Winter, White

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

  0 Copy quote

• Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same. Gossip is the tool of the poet, the shop-talk of the scientist, and the consolation of the housewife, wit, tycoon and intellectual. It begins in the nursery and ends when speech is past.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Love, Past, Race

  4 Copy quote

• God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Mother, Children, Women

  3 Copy quote

• The knowingness of little girls, is hidden underneath their curls.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Girl, Mom, Daughter

  Phyllis McGinley (1951). “A Short Walk from the Station”

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  2 Copy quote

• 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 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

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