Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

Few women care what a man looks like, and a good thing too.

A woman ought to look up to her husband, if only a half-inch.

Revenge leads to an empty fullness, like eating dirt.

Women go to beauty parlors for the unmussed look men hate.

Without enthusiasm, virtue functions not at all, and vice only poorly.

People are like birds: on the wing, all beautiful; up close, all beady little eyes.

Many marriages are simply working partnerships between businessmen and housekeepers.

If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors.

Forget about calories - everything makes thin people thinner, and fat people fatter.

Many who would not take the last cookie would take the last lifeboat.

We work for praise, and dawdle once we have it.

It's hard to feel middle-aged, because how can you tell how long you are going to live?

The neurotic listens to weather reports about Small Craft Warnings, and he thinks: They're talking about me.

Of all second-class citizens, neurotics are the only ones who are so by choice.

Neurotics are sure that no one understands them, and they wouldn't have it any other way.

There's an awful lot of blood around that water is thicker than.

We wake in the night, to stereophonic silence.

Be glad that you're greedy; the national economy would collapse if you weren't.

We are like people with short-term leases on summer cottages; we can never seem to make our provisions come out even with our stay.

The neurotic has perfect vision in one eye, but he cannot remember which.

A love that lasts for twenty years may be better than love, but it isn't love.

Whether or not you love television, you've got to admit that it certainly loves itself.

The soul may sleep and the body still be happy, but only in youth.

To talk easily with people, you must firmly believe that either you or they are interesting. And even then it's not easy.

The neurotic lies awake at night, composing letters to those he hates. He seldom thinks of dropping a line to those he loves.

The neurotic feels as though trapped in a gas-filled room where at any moment someone, probably himself, will strike a match.

The young do not need God, and the old cannot find Him.

If you hate your lot but wouldn't trade it, it's not your lot you hate.

It is always safe to tell people that they're looking wonderful.

I know which side my bread is buttered on: the side which falls on the carpet.

We're seldom drawn to a character we admire; only to a personality we like.

Minor vices lead to major ones, but minor virtues stay put.

We sometimes feel that we have been really understood, but it was always long ago, by someone now dead.

Many are saved from sin by being so inept at it.

In retrospect, our triumphs could as easily have happened to someone else; but our defeats are uniquely our own.

One day you are an apprentice, and everybody's pet; the next, you are coldly expected to deliver. There is never sufficient warning that the second day is coming.

The trouble with women is men; the trouble with men, men.

Things are never so bad that they can't get worse. But they're sometimes so bad they can't get better.

Humiliation is a vast country of imprecise boundaries. If you think you're there, you are. The neurotic rule: when in doubt, go ahead and feel humiliated.

There's no way to repay a mother's love, or lack of it.

Comfort, or revelation: God owes us one of these, but surely not both.

Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.

The neurotic circles ceaselessly above a fogged-in airport.

As we are human, we can't do what we can't do; as we're neurotic, we can't do what we can.

At the beginning of a love affair, not even the neurotic is neurotic.

Being neurotic is like shooting fish in a barrel, and missing them.

Nobody knows the trouble we've seen-but we keep trying to tell them.

Neurotic: someone who can go from the bottom to the top, and back again, without ever once touching the middle.

Your best work always seems to have been done by someone else.

Money: in its absence, we are coarse; in its presence, we are vulgar.