But in my life, in my personality, there is an essence of falseness and insincerity. A thin, fine vapor of fraud hangs always over me and dampens and injures some things in me that I value.

Mary MacLane

Categorized in : Personality Essence Vapor

I do not see any beauty in self-restraint. by Mary MacLane

I do not see any beauty in self-restraint.

self-restraint restraint self

I am not good. I am not virtuous. I am not sympathetic. I am not generous. I am merely and above all a creature of intense passionate feeling. I feel—everything. It is my genius. It burns me like fire.

genius fire feelings

There is really no right and wrong. I recognize no right and wron... by Mary MacLane

There is really no right and wrong. I recognize no right and wrong.

A genius who does not know that he is a genius is no genius. by Mary MacLane

A genius who does not know that he is a genius is no genius.

genius knows doe

I am lithe, but fragile from constant involuntary self-analysis. by Mary MacLane

I am lithe, but fragile from constant involuntary self-analysis.

constant analysis self

I have never read a line of Walt Whitman. by Mary MacLane

I have never read a line of Walt Whitman.

I read of the Kalamazoo girl who killed herself after reading the book. I am not at all surprised. She lived in Kalamazoo, for one thing, and then she read the book.

girl reading book

I do not sing nor play, but I adore music, particularly Chopin. I like him because I cannot understand him.

i-like-him adore play

I want fame more than I can tell. But more than I want fame I wan... by Mary MacLane

I want fame more than I can tell. But more than I want fame I want happiness.

i-can want fame

I want to write such things as compel the admiring acclamation of the world at large, such things as are written but once in years, things subtle but distinctly different from the books written every day.

writing book years

I would rather be a fairly happy wife and mother. by Mary MacLane

I would rather be a fairly happy wife and mother.

wives-and-mothers wife mother

I've never made plans for more than a day ahead. by Mary MacLane

I've never made plans for more than a day ahead.

Let me but make a beginning, let me but strike the world in a vulnerable spot, and I can take it by storm.

storm vulnerable world

My intention to lecture is as vague as my intention is to go on the stage. I will never consider an offer to lecture, not because I despise the vocation, but because I have no desire to appear on the public rostrum.

lectures goes-on desire

Of poets I put Virgil first - he was greatest. by Mary MacLane

Of poets I put Virgil first - he was greatest.

Except two breeds - the stupid and the narrowly feline - all women have a touch of the Lesbian: an assertion all good non-analytic creatures refute with horror, but quite true: there is always the poignant intensive personal taste, the flair of inner-sex, in the tenderest friendships of women.

Do you think a man is the only creature with whom one may fall in... by Mary MacLane

Do you think a man is the only creature with whom one may fall in love?

falling-in-love men thinking

Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman?

pure-love sexuality world

However great one's gift of language may be, there is always some... by Mary MacLane

However great one's gift of language may be, there is always something that one cannot tell.

speech language may

You may think me crude, and probably I am crude, but I am not so crude as I was, for I am clever enough to see that the girl of nineteen who thought herself a genius was only an unusual girl writing her heart out.

girl clever writing