Phyllis McGinley Quotes (41 Quotes)


    The story tells us, too, That if you cut a pine cone part way through, You find it bears within it like a brand The imprint of His hand.

    To be a housewife is a difficult, a wrenching, sometimes an ungrateful job if it is looked on only as a job. Regarded as a profession, it is the noblest as it is the most ancient of the catalogue. Let none persuade us differently or the world is lost indeed.

    Women are the fulfilled sex. Through our children we are able to produce our own immortality, so we lack that divine restlessness which sends men charging off in pursuit of fortune or fame or an imagined Utopia. That is why we number so few geniuses among us. The wholesome oyster wears no pearl, the healthy whale no ambergris, and as long as we can keep on adding to the race, we harbor a sort of health within ourselves.

    I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age.

    Gardening has compensations out of all proportions to its goals. It is creation in the pure sense.


    The East is a montage. It is old and it is young, very green in summer, very white in winter, gregarious, withdrawn and at once both sophisticated and provincial.

    Seventy is wormwood, Seventy is gall But its better to be seventy, Than not alive at all.

    Nothing fails like success; nothing is so defeated as yesterday's triumphant Cause.

    The thing to remember about fathers is, they're men. A girl has to keep it in mind They are dragon-seekers, bent on improbable rescues. Scratch any father, you find someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, believing change is a threat -- like your first shoes with heels on, like your first bicycle I it took such months to get.


    A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can't fold a paper in a crowded train.


    Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.

    Of course we women gossip on occasion. But our appetite for it is not as avid as a mans. It is in the boys gyms, the college fraternity houses, the club locker rooms, the paneled offices of business that gossip reaches its luxuriant flower.

    The Enemy, who wears her mother's usual face and confidential tone, has access doubtless stares into her writing case and listens on the phone.

    The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.

    The trouble with gardening is that it does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.

    Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!

    Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with a man, one man.

    Meek-eyed parents hasten down the ramps To greet their offspring, terrible from camps.

    Oh, high is the price of parenthood, and daughters may cost you double. You dare not forget, as you thought you could, that youth is a plague and a trouble.

    Gossip is the tool of the poet, the shoptalk of the scientist and the consolation of the housewife, wit, tycoon and intellectual. It begins in the nursery and ends when speech is past.

    The knowingness of little girls Is hidden underneath their curls.

    The subject of the poem was Bridget of Kildare (450523), a Christian lass among the Druids in Ireland. Saint Bridget was A problem child. Although a lass Demure and mild, And one who strove To please her dad, Saint Bridget drove The family mad. For here'

    Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade and to give men their freedom. Let them do what they are best at. While we scrawl interoffice memos and direct national or extranational affairs, men could spend all their time inventing wheels, peering at stars, composing poems, carving statues, exploring continents -- discovering, reforming, or crying out in a sacramental wilderness. Efficiency would probably increase, and no one would have to worry so much about the Gaza Strip or an election.

    The system -- the American one, at least -- is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet.

    Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.

    Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.

    Men can't be trusted with pruning shears any more than they can be trusted with the grocery money in a delicatessen ... They are like boys with new pocket knives who will not stop whittling.

    Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.

    Say what you will, making marriage work is a woman's business. The institution was invented to do her homage it was contrived for her protection. Unless she accepts it as such --as a beautiful, bountiful, but quite unequal association --the going will be hard indeed.

    Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing, peace is the measure.

    Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but pass. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.

    When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.

    Praise is warming and desirable ... what the human race lives on like bread. But praise is an earned thing. It has to be deserved like an honorary degree or a hug from a child. A compliment is manna, a free gift.

    Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy.

    God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues.

    Who could deny that privacy is a jewel It has always been the mark of privilege, the distinguishing feature of a truly urbane culture. Out of the cave, the tribal teepee, the pueblo, the community fortress, man emerged to build himself a house of his own with a shelter in it for himself and his diversions. Every age has seen it so. The poor might have to huddle together in cities for need's sake, and the frontiersman cling to his neighbors for the sake of protection. But in each civilization, as it advanced, those who could afford it chose the luxury of a withdrawing-place.

    Those wearing tolerance for a label call other views intolerable.

    Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.

    Frigidity is largely nonsense. It is this generation's catchword, one only vaguely understood and constantly misused. Frigid women are few. There is a host of diffident and slow-ripening ones.


    More Phyllis McGinley Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Man - Literature - Garden - Poetry - Gardening - Mind - Woman - Youth - Christianity - Business & Commerce - Fathers - Parents - Education - Gossip - Work & Career - Praise - Telephones - Hugs - Sex - View All Phyllis McGinley Quotations

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