"In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?"
Mary McCarthy
Author
Mary McCarthy was an influential American writer known for her incisive critiques of society and her exploration of human relationships, particularly in her novel 'The Group.'
- Born
- June 21, 1912
- Died
- October 25, 1989
- Quotes
- 136
- Rank
- #2356
Quote collection
Mary McCarthy quotes (page 4 of 7)
136 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
"Our language, once homely and colloquial, seeks to aggrandize our meanest activities with polysyllabic terms or it retreats from frankness into a stammering verbosity."
"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."
"it's easier to forgive your enemies than to forgive your friends."
"It [Socialism] was a kind of political hockey played by big, gaunt, dyspeptic girls in pants."
"Who are the advertising men kidding, besides the European tourist? Between the tired, sad, gentle faces of the subway riders and the grinning Holy Families of the Ad-Mass, there exists no possibility of even a wishful identification."
"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."
"If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it."
"Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes."
"In morals as in politics anarchy is not for the weak."
"When you have committed an action that you cannot bear to think about, that causes you to writhe in retrospect, do not seek to evade the memory: make yourself relive it, confront it repeatedly over and over, till finally, you will discover, through sheer repetition it loses its power to pain you. It works, I guarantee you, this sure-fire guilt-eradicator, like a homeopathic medicine - like in small doses applied to like. It works, but I am not sure that it is a good thing."
"The happy ending is our national belief."
"Anybody who has ever tried to rectify an injustice or set a record straight comes to feel that he is going mad."
"What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?"
"Making love, we are all more alike than we are when we are talking or acting."
"A politician or political thinker who calls himself a political realist is usually boasting that he sees politics, so to speak, in the raw; he is generally a proclaimed cynic and pessimist who makes it his business to look behind words and fine speeches for the motive. This motive is always low."
"love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel."
"The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist."
"The present can try to bury the past, an operation that is most atrocious when it is most successful."