All Mary McCarthy Quotes
- Like Michelangelo and Cellini, Florentines of every station are absorbed in acquiring real estate: a little apartment that can be rented to foreigners; a farm… Absorbed
- Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Spicy court-memoirs, the lives of gallant ladies, recollections of an ex-nun, a monk's confession,… Accounts
- It [Socialism] was a kind of political hockey played by big, gaunt, dyspeptic girls in pants. Big
- In moments of despair, we look on ourselves lead-enly as objects; we see ourselves, our lives, as someone else might see them and may even… Despair
- The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists-incredible as it seems. It is the same… Canals
- The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it were a myth for the… Cities
- 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… Advertised
- Venice is the worlds unconscious: a misers glittering hoard, guarded by a Beast whose eyes are made of white agate, and by a saint who… Agate
- Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field,… Activity
- 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… Cannot Pardon
- We are the hero of our own story. Healing
- We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story. All
- Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. Bureaucracy
- In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons. Consideration
- Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward,… Action
- When an American heiress wants to buy a man, she at once crosses the Atlantic. The only really materialistic people I have ever met have… American
- The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the… Books
- 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 away trade secrets. Afraid
- Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist. Antidote
- I really tried, or so I thought, to avoid lying, but it seemed to me that they forced it on me by the difference in… Avoid
- What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were? Both
- In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality. All
- There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing. Been
- If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad. Bad
- A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who,… Advance