Top 100 Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
#1. Nostalgia for what we have lost is more bearable than nostalgia for what we have never had
Mignon McLaughlin
#2. It must infuriate our children to see us always so much more forbearing with everybody else's.
Mignon McLaughlin
#3. So long as God reveals Himself, or doesn't, He is behaving like God.
Mignon McLaughlin
#4. The neurotic listens to weather reports about Small Craft Warnings, and he thinks: They're talking about me.
Mignon McLaughlin
#5. If you hate your lot but wouldn't trade it, it's not your lot you hate.
Mignon McLaughlin
#7. Hot dogs always seem better out than at home; so do French-fried potatoes; so do your children.
Mignon McLaughlin
#8. Most of our diversions do not so much delay death as accustom us to it.
Mignon McLaughlin
#9. My thoughts, I guess, are bitter: who but the bitter have thoughts?
Mignon McLaughlin
#10. Women polish the silver and water the plants and wait to be really needed.
Mignon McLaughlin
#11. Every American child should grow up knowing a second language, preferably English.
Mignon McLaughlin
#12. How can a man marry wisely in his twenties? The girl he's going to wind up wanting hasn't even been born.
Mignon McLaughlin
#13. If an article is attractive, or useful, or inexpensive, they'll stop making it tomorrow; if it's all three, they stopped making it yesterday.
Mignon McLaughlin
#16. In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.
Mignon McLaughlin
#17. Being neurotic is like shooting fish in a barrel, and missing them.
Mignon McLaughlin
#18. We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter.
Mignon McLaughlin
#19. Don't ask others to forgive in you a sin they're dying to commit themselves.
Mignon McLaughlin
#20. A love that lasts for twenty years may be better than love, but it isn't love.
Mignon McLaughlin
#21. We lavish on animals the love we are afraid to show to people. They might not return it; or worse, they might.
Mignon McLaughlin
#22. We have to call it "freedom": who'd want to die for "a lesser tyranny"
Mignon McLaughlin
#23. An artist usually has no friends except other artists, and usually they do not like his work.
Mignon McLaughlin
#24. It is always safe to tell people that they're looking wonderful.
Mignon McLaughlin
#25. Neurosis is no worse than a bad cold; you ache all over, and it's made you a mess, but you won't die from it.
Mignon McLaughlin
#26. When we discuss those we love with those who do not love them, the end of love is near.
Mignon McLaughlin
#27. If you see in your children most of your own faults, you have failed as a parent, but succeeded as a neurotic.
Mignon McLaughlin
#29. Surrounded by people who love life, you love it too; surrounded by people who don't, you don't.
Mignon McLaughlin
#30. Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul.
Mignon McLaughlin
#31. One day you are an apprentice, and everybody's pet; the next, you are coldly expected to deliver. There is never sufficient warning that the second day is coming.
Mignon McLaughlin
#32. After he has had his tantrum, the neurotic expects those around him to feel friendly and relaxed; after all, he does.
Mignon McLaughlin
#33. If your children spend most of their time in other people's houses, you're lucky; if they all congregate at your house, you're blessed.
Mignon McLaughlin
#34. The first-rate mind is always curious, compassionate, original, and pessimistic.
Mignon McLaughlin
#35. Many beautiful women have been made happy by their own beauty, but no intelligent woman has ever been made happy by her own intelligence.
Mignon McLaughlin
#36. Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets.
Mignon McLaughlin
#37. If there is something you must do and you cannot do it, you cannot do anything else.
Mignon McLaughlin
#39. When the pressures really mount, the neurotic must choose: Shall he have a good cry, or set fire to his neighbor's house?
Mignon McLaughlin
#40. They threaten me with lung cancer, and still I smoke and smoke. If they'd only threaten me with hard work, I might stop.
Mignon McLaughlin
#41. We come late, if at all, to wine and philosophy: whiskey and action are easier.
Mignon McLaughlin
#43. Forget about calories - everything makes thin people thinner, and fat people fatter.
Mignon McLaughlin
#44. Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn't either.
Mignon McLaughlin
#46. When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one.
Mignon McLaughlin
#47. Affairs are just as disillusioning as marriage, and much less restful.
Mignon McLaughlin
#48. Vanity, revenge, loneliness, boredom, all apply: lust is one of the least of the reasons for promiscuity.
Mignon McLaughlin
#49. A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel: expensive, but worth it.
Mignon McLaughlin
#52. We cough because we can't help it, but others do it on purpose.
Mignon McLaughlin
#53. Most of us would rather risk a catastrophe than read the instructions.
Mignon McLaughlin
#55. In youth we are plagued by desire; in later years, by the desire to feel desire.
Mignon McLaughlin
#56. Neurotics make poor patriots; if you're ashamed of something as big as yourself, it's hard to be proud of something as small as your country.
Mignon McLaughlin
#57. Too much money is as demoralizing as too little, and there's no such thing as exactly enough..
Mignon McLaughlin
#58. Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth: we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money.
Mignon McLaughlin
#59. Our strenght is often composed of the weakness we're damned if we're going to show.
Mignon McLaughlin
#60. To talk easily with people, you must firmly believe that either you or they are interesting. And even then it's not easy.
Mignon McLaughlin
#61. Even cowards can endure hardship; only he brave can endure suspense
Mignon McLaughlin
#62. Don't fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever, or not at all
Mignon McLaughlin
#63. We can never understand other people's motives, nor their furniture.
Mignon McLaughlin
#66. Neurotic: someone who can go from the bottom to the top, and back again, without ever once touching the middle.
Mignon McLaughlin
#67. We'd all like a reputation for generosity, and we'd all like to buy it cheap.
Mignon McLaughlin
#68. A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.
Mignon McLaughlin
#69. Creative work is one of life's greatest pleasures, and the only one we will gladly interrupt.
Mignon McLaughlin
#70. Of all second-class citizens, neurotics are the only ones who are so by choice.
Mignon McLaughlin
#72. Don't look for God where He is needed most; if you didn't bring Him there, He isn't there.
Mignon McLaughlin
#73. There are three iron links in the neurotic's chain: unloving, unlovable, unloved.
Mignon McLaughlin
#74. Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.
Mignon McLaughlin
#75. The neurotic usually obeys his own Golden Rule: Hate thy neighbor as thyself.
Mignon McLaughlin
#77. Neurotics are anxiety prone, accident prone, and often just prone.
Mignon McLaughlin
#78. As we grow older, our capacity for enjoyment shrinks, but not our appetite for it.
Mignon McLaughlin
#79. When women feel they have learned to forgive their mothers - and men, their fathers - all it usually means is that they've decided to allow themselves the same kind of behavior.
Mignon McLaughlin
#80. Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness.
Mignon McLaughlin
#81. An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.
Mignon McLaughlin
#82. What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
Mignon McLaughlin
#83. It's awesome to realize that if your greatest potential talent is for riding a bicycle upside down on a high wire, you will somehow discover it.
Mignon McLaughlin
#84. A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.
Mignon McLaughlin
#85. What's for dinner is the only question many husbands ask their wives, and the only one to which they care about the answer.
Mignon McLaughlin
#87. I've been hiding from God, and I'm appalled to find how easy it is.
Mignon McLaughlin
#88. There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later.
Mignon McLaughlin
#91. Always live up to your standards - by lowering them, if necessary.
Mignon McLaughlin
#92. The three horrors of modern life - talk without meaning, desire without love, work without satisfaction.
Mignon McLaughlin
#93. Women are good listeners, but it's a waste of time telling your troubles to a man unless there's something specific you want him to do.
Mignon McLaughlin
#94. The neurotic's strongest fantasy is that he has no fantasies. The real is very real to him, the unreal even more so.
Mignon McLaughlin
#95. The neurotic has perfect vision in one eye, but he cannot remember which.
Mignon McLaughlin
#97. The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.
Mignon McLaughlin
#98. The ideal home: big enough for you to hear the children, but not very well.
Mignon McLaughlin
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