Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

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

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”

“An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.”

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

“Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality.”

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

“Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer.”

“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.”

“Few of us could bear to have ourselves for neighbors.”

“For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance.”

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

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

“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.”

“Men who don't like girls with brains don't like girls.”

“Most of us would rather risk a catastrophe than read the instructions.”

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

“Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.”

“Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.”

“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 head never rules the heart, but just becomes its partner in crime.”

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

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

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

“We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter.”

“With each passing year, one has less to say, and knows better how to say it.”

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

“It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.”

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

“Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones.”

“I tell you this, and I tell you plain
What you have done, you will do again
You will bite your tongue, careful or not
Upon the already-bitten spot.”

“In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.”

“Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before.”

“The know-nothings are, unfortunately, seldom the do-nothings.”

“We'd all like a reputation for generosity, and we'd all like to buy it cheap.”

“What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.”

“You never realize how tacky your furniture is till you try to give it to the Salvation Army and they won't take it.”