Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or… — Mary McCarthy Action Copy Share Image
Europeans used to say Americans were puritanical. Then they discovered that we were not puritans. So now they say that we are… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
This grossly advertised wonder [Venice], this gold idol with clay feet, this trompe-l'oeil, this painted deception, this cliche-what intelligent iconoclast could fail… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of… — Mary McCarthy Absurdity Copy Share Image
I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
All dramatic realism is somewhat sadistic; an audience is persuaded to watch something that makes it uncomfortable and from which no relief… — Mary McCarthy Audience Copy Share Image
Who are the advertising men kidding, besides the European tourist? Between the tired, sad, gentle faces of the subway riders and the… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The horror of Gandhi's murder lies not in the political motives behind it or in its consequences for Indian policy or for… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
As soon as you become a writer, you lose contact with ordinary experience or tend to. ... the worst fate of a… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Once the state is looked upon as the source of rights, rather than their bound protector, freedom becomes conditional on the pleasure… — Mary McCarthy Bounds Copy Share Image
The furniture and trappings in the apartment are all in a state of flux - here today, gone tomorrow. Nothing is anchored… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
I once started a detective story to make moneybut I couldn't get the murder to take place! At the end of three… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Laughter is the great antidote for self-pity, maybe a specific for the malady, yet probably it does tend to dry one's feelings… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
When an American heiress wants to buy a man, she at once crosses the Atlantic. The only really materialistic people I have… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed… — Mary McCarthy Behavior Copy Share Image
All ideas advanced to deal with the Florentine noise problem, the Florentine traffic problem, are Utopian, and nobody believes in them, just… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Understanding is often a prelude to forgiveness, but they are not the same, and we often forgive what we cannot understand (seeing… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
“His flexible mind extended to take in his opponent's position and then snapped back like an elastic, with the illusion that it… — Mary McCarthy Psychology Copy Share Image
If you talked or laughed in church, told lies, had impure thoughts or conversations, you were bad; if you obeyed your parents… — Mary McCarthy Character Copy Share Image
If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything. — Mary McCarthy Alive Copy Share Image
If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something… — Mary McCarthy Bad decision Copy Share Image
Like Michelangelo and Cellini, Florentines of every station are absorbed in acquiring real estate: a little apartment that can be rented to… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Congress-these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are… — Mary McCarthy Congress Copy Share Image
The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue,… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The famous Florentine elegance, which attracts tourists to the shops on Via Tornabuoni and Via della Vigna Nuova, is characterized by austerity… — Mary McCarthy Austerity Copy Share Image
In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The dictator is also the scapegoat; in assuming absolute authority, he assumes absolute guilt; and the oppressed masses, groaning under the yoke,… — Mary McCarthy Absolutes Copy Share Image
“If [she] had come to prefer the company of odd ducks, it was possibly because they had no conception of oddity, or… — Mary McCarthy Business Copy Share Image
I really tried, or so I thought, to avoid lying, but it seemed to me that they forced it on me by… — Mary McCarthy Differences Copy Share Image
Modern neurosis began with the discoveries of Copernicus. Science made men feel small by showing him that the earth was not the… — Mary McCarthy Center of the universe Copy Share Image
The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists-incredible as it seems. It… — Mary McCarthy Canals Copy Share Image
For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him… — Mary McCarthy Deposits Copy Share Image
![“This grossly advertised wonder [Venice], this gold idol with clay feet, this trompe-l'oeil, this painted deception, this cliche-what intelligent iconoclast could fail to experience a destructive impulse in her presence?” quote by Mary McCarthy](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/97d/mary-mccarthy-2691_clay_this-grossly-advertised-wonder-venice-th_933398.png)
![“If [she] had come to prefer the company of odd ducks, it was possibly because they had no conception of oddity, or rather, they thought you were odd if you weren't.” quote by Mary McCarthy](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/a05/mary-mccarthy-2691_business_if-she-had-come-to-prefer-the-company-of_522443.png)
