The present can try to bury the past, an operation that is most atrocious when it is most successful. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
It [Socialism] was a kind of political hockey played by big, gaunt, dyspeptic girls in pants. — 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
Anybody who has ever tried to rectify an injustice or set a record straight comes to feel that he is going mad. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Sex annihilates identity, and the space given to sex in contemporary novels is an avowal of the absence of character. — Mary McCarthy Absence Copy Share Image
From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people. — Mary McCarthy Conclusion Copy Share Image
You know what my favourite quotation is?.. It's from Chaucer... Criseyde says it, "I am myne owene woman, wel at ese." — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
A good deal of education consists of unlearning-the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve. — Mary McCarthy Bad habit Copy Share Image
What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake. If you're interested in the cake, you… — 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… — Mary McCarthy America Copy Share Image
The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of… — Mary McCarthy American life 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… — Mary McCarthy Action Copy Share Image
The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the… — Mary McCarthy Art Copy Share Image
Illiteracy at the poverty level (mainly a matter of bad grammar) does not alarm me nearly as much as the illiteracy of… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The fact is that gardening, more than most of our other activities except sometimes love-making, confronts us with the inexplicable. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass ... What is implied in these nuances… — Mary McCarthy Character education Copy Share Image
The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner's visit to… — Mary McCarthy Things happen for a reason 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
In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but… — Mary McCarthy Absence Copy Share Image
It really seems to me sometimes that the only hope is space. That is to say, perhaps the most energeticin a bad… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over… — Mary McCarthy Art Copy Share Image
Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Spicy court-memoirs, the lives of gallant ladies, recollections of an ex-nun,… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
A politician or political thinker who calls himself a political realist is usually boasting that he sees politics, so to speak, in… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist. — Mary McCarthy Facts Copy Share Image
“Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’." (on Lillian Hellman)” — Mary McCarthy Authors Copy Share Image
Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel. — Mary McCarthy Books Copy Share Image
Venice is the worlds unconscious: a misers glittering hoard, guarded by a Beast whose eyes are made of white agate, and by… — Mary McCarthy Beast Copy Share Image
I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think,… — Mary McCarthy Adventure Copy Share Image
The suspense in a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist himself, who is intensely curious too about… — Mary McCarthy Books Copy Share Image
The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof — Mary McCarthy America Copy Share Image
... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a… — Mary McCarthy America Copy Share Image
Any sizeable Portuguese town looks like a superstitious bride's finery - something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. — Mary McCarthy Blue Copy Share Image
Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of… — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality. — Mary McCarthy Copy Share Image
You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by… — Mary McCarthy Age 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
“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
![“It [Socialism] was a kind of political hockey played by big, gaunt, dyspeptic girls in pants.” quote by Mary McCarthy](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/82e/mary-mccarthy-2691_bigs_it-socialism-was-a-kind-of-political-hoc_807114.png)
