Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone.

Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets.

Courage can't see around corners but goes around them anyway.

It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.

When "Why not do it?" barely outweighs "Why do it?" — don't do it.

Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head.

The three horrors of modern life - talk without meaning, desire without love, work without satisfaction.

Self-confidence grows on trees, in other people's orchards.

Men enjoy being thought of as hunters, but are generally too lazy to hunt. Women, on the other hand, love to hunt, but would rather nobody knew it.

In any family, measles are less contagious than bad habits.

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.

Our strength is often composed of the weakness that we're damned if we're going to show.

We welcome passion, for the mind is briefly let off duty.

Anything you lose automatically doubles in value.

There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today.

Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.

Life marks us all down, so it's just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves.

Pull yourself together' is seldom said to anyone who can.

God doesn't measure His bounty, but oh how we do!

There's nothing wrong with most men's egos that the kowtowing of a headwaiter can't cure.

The way the neurotic sees it: bars on his door mean that he's locked in; bars on your door mean that he's locked out.

We have to call it "freedom": who'd want to die for "a lesser tyranny"

If there is something you must do and you cannot do it, you cannot do anything else.

We can never understand other people's motives, nor their furniture.

The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive - perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine.

The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.

We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.

If you made a list of reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a hell of a lot of overlapping.

Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn't either.

The past is rich in lessons from which we would greatly profit except that the present is always so full of Special Circumstances.

There are three iron links in the neurotic's chain: unloving, unlovable, unloved.

True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it is a regret over motive.

We often pray to be better, when in truth we only want to feel better.

My doctor is nice; every time I see him, I'm ashamed of what I think of doctors in general.

There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later.

Spite is never lonely; envy always tags along.

Men prefer brief praise, pitched high; women are satisfied with praise in a lower key, just so it goes on and on.

A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.

A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.

If an article is attractive, or useful, or inexpensive, they'll stop making it tomorrow; if it's all three, they stopped making it yesterday.

Don't look for God where He is needed most; if you didn't bring Him there, He isn't there.

What we love about love is the fever, which marriage puts to bed and cures.

Many of us go through life feeling as an actor might feel who does not like his part and does not believe in the play.

A woman asks little of love: only that she be able to feel like a heroine.

Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul.

Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.

We are keenly aware of the faults of our friends, but if they like us enough it doesn't matter.

How strange that the young should always think the world is against them - when in fact that is the only time it is for them.

We are irritated by rascals, intolerant of fools, and prepared to love the rest. But where are they?

Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud.