Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking,… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Yet friendship, I believe, is essential to intellectuals. It is probably the growth hormone the mind requires as it begins its activity of producing and exchanging ideas. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. In the course of my history, not… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share
Any sizeable Portuguese town looks like a superstitious bride's finery - something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
“She considered [her] life, which had not been a life but only a sort of greeting, a Hello There.” — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
America is indeed a revelation, though not quite the one that was planned. Given a clean slate, man, it was hoped, would write the… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Making love, we are all more alike than we are when we are talking or acting. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The only form of action open to a child is to break something or strike someone, its mother or another child; it cannot cause… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother's nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
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