Absurdity Quote by Mary McCarthy

“The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly.”

Mary McCarthy

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Absurdity Canals Essentials Existentialism Folly Real Real world Realms This world Unreal Venice World

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

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In morals as in politics anarchy is not for the weak.

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Yet friendship, I believe, is essential to intellectuals. It is probably the growth hormone the mind requires as it begins its activity of producing…

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Any sizeable Portuguese town looks like a superstitious bride's finery - something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

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The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends.

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“She considered [her] life, which had not been a life but only a sort of greeting, a Hello There.”

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America is indeed a revelation, though not quite the one that was planned. Given a clean slate, man, it was hoped, would write the…

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The happy ending is our national belief.

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Making love, we are all more alike than we are when we are talking or acting.

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... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending…

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The only form of action open to a child is to break something or strike someone, its mother or another child; it cannot cause…

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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…

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Explore all 154 Mary McCarthy quotes

More Absurdity quotes

Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's…

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The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into…

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For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble…

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Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror." "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion…

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One would think that a system loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as Scripture religion is could never have obtained credit; yet we…

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Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.

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Thought of the incomprehensible sequence of changes and chances that make up a life, all the beauties and horrors and absurdities whose conjunctions create…

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