Mary McCarthy Quotes & Sayings

Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts. — Mary McCarthy

A good deal of education consists of unlearning-the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve. — Mary McCarthy

Venice is the worlds unconscious: a misers glittering hoard, guarded by a Beast whose eyes are made of white agate, and by a saint who is really a prince who has just slain a dragon. — Mary McCarthy

Most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know; it made them feel ignorant. — Mary McCarthy

The furniture and trappings in the apartment are all in a state of flux - here today, gone tomorrow. Nothing is anchored to its place, not even the coffee-pot, which floats off and returns, on the tide of the signora's marine nature. — Mary McCarthy

I once started a detective story to make money-but I couldn't get the murder to take place! At the end of three chapters I was still describing the characters and the milieu, so I thought, this is not going to work. No corpse! — Mary McCarthy

It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing. — Mary McCarthy

All dramatic realism is somewhat sadistic; an audience is persuaded to watch something that makes it uncomfortable and from which no relief is offered - no laughter, no tears, no purgation. — Mary McCarthy

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. — Mary McCarthy

His flexible mind extended to take in his opponent's position and then snapped back like an elastic, with the illusion that it had covered ground. — Mary McCarthy

I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets. — Mary McCarthy

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

Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."
(on Lillian Hellman) — Mary McCarthy

What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were? — Mary McCarthy

I really tried, or so I thought, to avoid lying, but it seemed to me that they forced it on me by the difference in their vision of things, so that I was always transposing reality for them into something they could understand. — Mary McCarthy

Others are to us like the characters in fiction, eternal and incorrigible; the surprises they give us turn out in the end to have been predictable and unexpected variations on the theme of being themselves. — Mary McCarthy

If you talked or laughed in church, told lies, had impure thoughts or conversations, you were bad; if you obeyed your parents or guardians, went to confession and communion regularly, said prayers for the dead, you were good. — Mary McCarthy

Our language, once homely and colloquial, seeks to aggrandize our meanest activities with polysyllabic terms or it retreats from frankness into a stammering verbosity. — Mary McCarthy

As subjects, we all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story. We cannot believe that it is finished, that we are 'finished,' even though we may say so; we expect another chapter, another installment, tomorrow or next week. — Mary McCarthy

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. — Mary McCarthy

The present can try to bury the past, an operation that is most atrocious when it is most successful. — Mary McCarthy

The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air. — Mary McCarthy

Congress-these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage. — Mary McCarthy

I mean exactly that," Mr. Davison retorted. "You've hit the nail smack on the head. We pay a price for having money. People in my position" - he turned to Kay - "have 'privilege.' That's what I read in the Nation and the New Republic." Mrs. Davison nodded. "Good," said Mr. Davison. "Now listen. The fellow who's got privilege gives up some rights or ought to. — Mary McCarthy

The group was not afraid of being radical either; they could see the good Roosevelt was doing, despite what Mother and Dad said; they were not taken in by party labels and thought the Democrats should be given a chance to show what they had up their sleeve. — Mary McCarthy

The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable. — Mary McCarthy

He would have been far more attractive to her if she could have trusted him. You could not love a man who was always playing hide-and-seek with you; that was the lesson she had learned. — Mary McCarthy

My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life. — Mary McCarthy

Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a 'work' of man. — Mary McCarthy

The dictator is also the scapegoat; in assuming absolute authority, he assumes absolute guilt; and the oppressed masses, groaning under the yoke, know themselves to be innocent as lambs, while they pray hypocritically for deliverance. — Mary McCarthy

A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world. — Mary McCarthy

The happy ending is our national belief. — Mary McCarthy

He was a thoroughly bad hat, then, but that was the kind, of course, that nice women broke their hearts over. — Mary McCarthy

The consumer today is the victim of the manufacturer who launches on him a regiment of products for which he must make room in his soul. — Mary McCarthy

I understand what you are feeling," he said. "As Socrates showed, love cannot be anything else but the love of the good. But to find the good is very rare. That is why love is rare, in spite of what people think. It happens to one in a thousand, and to that one it is a revelation. No wonder he cannot communicate with the other nine hundred and ninety-nine. — Mary McCarthy

In moments of despair, we look on ourselves lead-enly as objects; we see ourselves, our lives, as someone else might see them and may even be driven to kill ourselves if the separation, the "knowledge," seems sufficiently final. — Mary McCarthy

The tourist Venice is Venice. — Mary McCarthy

The erotic element always present in fashion, the kiss of loving labor on the body, is now overtly expressed by language. Belts hug or clasp; necklines plunge; jerseys bind. The word exciting tingles everywhere. — Mary McCarthy

It [Socialism] was a kind of political hockey played by big, gaunt, dyspeptic girls in pants. — Mary McCarthy

I was going to get myself recognized at any price. If I could not win fame by goodness, I was ready to do it by badness. — Mary McCarthy

The famous Florentine elegance, which attracts tourists to the shops on Via Tornabuoni and Via della Vigna Nuova, is characterized by austerity of line, simplicity, economy of effect. — Mary McCarthy

For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer. — Mary McCarthy

Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard. — Mary McCarthy

You musn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex. — Mary McCarthy

Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man. — Mary McCarthy

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

It came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality, the sole form of intellectuality of which they were capable. It represented, in a rudimentary way, the ability to make categories, to generalize. — Mary McCarthy

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

I am for the ones who represent sense, and so was Jane Austen. — Mary McCarthy

When you have committed an action that you cannot bear to think about, that causes you to writhe in retrospect, do not seek to evade the memory: make yourself relive it, confront it repeatedly over and over, till finally, you will discover, through sheer repetition it loses its power to pain you. It works, I guarantee you, this sure-fire guilt-eradicator, like a homeopathic medicine - like in small doses applied to like. It works, but I am not sure that it is a good thing. — Mary McCarthy

The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism. — Mary McCarthy

A politician or political thinker who calls himself a political realist is usually boasting that he sees politics, so to speak, in the raw; he is generally a proclaimed cynic and pessimist who makes it his business to look behind words and fine speeches for the motive. This motive is always low. — Mary McCarthy

Anybody who has ever tried to rectify an injustice or set a record straight comes to feel that he is going mad. — Mary McCarthy

This grossly advertised wonder [Venice], this gold idol with clay feet, this trompe-l'oeil, this painted deception, this cliche-what intelligent iconoclast could fail to experience a destructive impulse in her presence? — Mary McCarthy

The only form of action open to a child is to break something or strike someone, its mother or another child; it cannot cause things to happen in the world. — Mary McCarthy

The return to a favorite novel is generally tied up with changes in oneself that must be counted as improvements, but have the feel of losses. It is like going back to a favorite house, country, person; nothing is where it belongs, including one's heart. — Mary McCarthy

Love had done this to her, for the second time. Love was bad for her. There must be certain people who were allergic to love, and she was one of them. Not only was it bad for her; it made her bad; it poisoned her. Before she knew him, not only had she been far, far happier but she had been nicer. Loving him was turning her into an awful person, a person she hated. — Mary McCarthy

Like Michelangelo and Cellini, Florentines of every station are absorbed in acquiring real estate: a little apartment that can be rented to foreigners; a farm that will supply the owner with oil, wine, fruit, and flowers for the house. — Mary McCarthy

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior. — Mary McCarthy

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 Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against Protestant ascendancy ... The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others ... — Mary McCarthy

Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility. — Mary McCarthy

You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex - that's quite a thought, isn't it? — Mary McCarthy

If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything. — Mary McCarthy

We are a nation of 20 million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub. — Mary McCarthy

Calling someone a monster does not make him more guilty; it makes him less so by classing him with beasts and devils. — Mary McCarthy

The comic element is the incorrigible element in every human being; the capacity to learn, from experience or instruction, is what is forbidden to all comic creations and to what is comic in you and me. — Mary McCarthy

In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality. — Mary McCarthy

The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep. — Mary McCarthy

The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero. — Mary McCarthy

Illiteracy at the poverty level (mainly a matter of bad grammar) does not alarm me nearly as much as the illiteracy of the well-to-do. — Mary McCarthy

Feminism is ridiculous. Feminists are silly idealists who want to be on top. There is no real equality in sexual relationships - someone always wins. — Mary McCarthy

If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it. — Mary McCarthy

To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics. — Mary McCarthy

What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake. — Mary McCarthy

Europeans used to say Americans were puritanical. Then they discovered that we were not puritans. So now they say that we are obsessed with sex. — Mary McCarthy

Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret. — Mary McCarthy

The average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality. — Mary McCarthy

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

Luckily, I am writing a memoir and not a work of fiction, and therefore I do not have to account for my grandmother's unpleasing character and look for the Oedipal fixation or the traumatic experience which would give her that clinical authenticity that is nowadays so desirable in portraiture. — Mary McCarthy

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

Morality did not keep well; it required stable conditions; it was costly; it was subject to variations, and the market for it was uncertain. — Mary McCarthy

With extramarital courtship, the deception was prolonged where it had been ephemeral, necessary where it had been frivolous, conspiratorial where it had been lonely. — Mary McCarthy

It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief. — Mary McCarthy

You know what my favourite quotation is? ... It's from Chaucer ... Criseyde says it, I am myne owene woman, wel at ese. — Mary McCarthy

A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget. — Mary McCarthy

One of the big features of living alone was that you could talk to yourself all you wanted and address imaginary audiences, running the gamut of emotion. — Mary McCarthy

It was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the words ofthe Mass and the litanies and the old Latin hymns, in the Easter lilies around the altar, rosaries, ornamented prayer books, votive lamps, holy cards stamped in gold and decorated with flower wreaths and a saint's picture. — Mary McCarthy

The labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process. — Mary McCarthy

In violence we forget who we are. — Mary McCarthy

If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad. — Mary McCarthy

In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency? — Mary McCarthy

I shall never send for a priest or recite an Act of Contrition in my last moments. I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person. — Mary McCarthy

The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner. — Mary McCarthy

She felt really quite unequal to the tedious process of reconciliation which, in view of the fact that she was sorry, seemed to her highly unnecessary, like some legal routine or the difficulty of getting passports. Her interest in expiation quickly vanished in the face of its actuality. — Mary McCarthy

The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist. — Mary McCarthy

An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question. — Mary McCarthy

Modern neurosis began with the discoveries of Copernicus. Science made men feel small by showing him that the earth was not the center of the universe. — Mary McCarthy

Scratch a socialist and you find a snob. — Mary McCarthy

You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. — Mary McCarthy

The horror of Gandhi's murder lies not in the political motives behind it or in its consequences for Indian policy or for the future of non-violence; the horror lies simply in the fact that any man could look into the face of this extraordinary person and deliberately pull a trigger. — Mary McCarthy