Our language, once homely and colloquial, seeks to aggrandize our meanest activities with polysyllabic terms or it retreats from frankness into a stammering verbosity.

Mary McCarthy

Categorized in : Stammering Language Retreat

We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

positive-attitude hero life

Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the." by Mary McCarthy

Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."

writing funny lying

most people did not care to be taught what they did not already k... by Mary McCarthy

most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know; it made them feel ignorant.

learning education people

We are the hero of our own story. by Mary McCarthy

We are the hero of our own story.

inspirational-life self-esteem hero

The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep.

selfish good-night sleep

If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.

bad-decision realistic decision

You know what my favourite quotation is?.. It's from Chaucer... Criseyde says it, "I am myne owene woman, wel at ese."

chaucer favourite knows

Illiteracy at the poverty level (mainly a matter of bad grammar) does not alarm me nearly as much as the illiteracy of the well-to-do.

alarms levels doe

From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religio... by Mary McCarthy

From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people.

good-people driven people

Feminism is ridiculous. Feminists are silly idealists who want to be on top. There is no real equality in sexual relationships - someone always wins.

real winning silly

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of de... by Mary McCarthy

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

modern libertarian liberty

What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary... by Mary McCarthy

What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake.

plums cake real

In violence, we forget who we are by Mary McCarthy

In violence, we forget who we are

domestic-violence who-we-are war

There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.

perception truth happiness

In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy demo... by Mary McCarthy

In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

equality literature science

... it was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the words ofthe Mass and the litanies and the old Latin hymns, in the Easter lilies around the altar, rosaries, ornamented prayer books, votive lamps, holy cards stamped in gold and decorated with flower wreaths and a saint's picture.

easter prayer latin

Others are to us like the characters in fiction, eternal and incorrigible; the surprises they give us turn out in the end to have been predictable and unexpected variations on the theme of being themselves.

personality giving character

Understanding is often a prelude to forgiveness, but they are not the same, and we often forgive what we cannot understand (seeing nothing else to do) and understand what we cannot pardon.

forgiving political understanding

It is impossible, except for theologians, to conceive of a world-wide scandal or a universe-wide scandal; the proof of this is the way people have settled down to living with nuclear fission, radiation poisoning, hydrogen bombs, satellites, and space rockets.

hydrogen-bomb space people

Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of h... by Mary McCarthy

Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

apes literature men