Saturday, May 04, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Mary McCarthy

« All quotes from this author
 

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.
--
My Confession (1953)

 
Mary McCarthy

» Mary McCarthy - all quotes »



Tags: Mary McCarthy Quotes, Authors starting by M


Similar quotes

 

No doubt you would deeply regret any error you might make in the hurry of the moment; but you wouldn't regret it half as much as I should! However, I suppose we've got to trust somebody, as we go through life, and your plan seems, on the whole, as good a one as any.

 
Kenneth Grahame
 

We regret not having the courage to make such and such decision; we regret much more having made one - any one. Better no action than the consequences of an action.

 
Emil Cioran
 

I knew that Gandhiji usually acts on instinct (I prefer to call it that than the "inner voice" or an answer to prayer) and very often that instinct is right. He has repeatedly shown what a wonderful knack he has of sensing the mass mind and of acting at the psychological moment. The reasons which he afterward adduces to justify his action are usually afterthoughts and seldom carry one very far. A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.

 
Jawaharlal Nehru
 

Of course, I had to own that he was right; I didn't feel much regret for what I'd done. Still, to my mind, he overdid it, and I'd have liked to have a chance of explaining to him, in a quite friendly, almost affectionate way, that I have never been able to really regret anything in all my life. I've always been far too much absorbed in the present moment, or the immediate future, to think back.

 
Albert Camus
 

Jesus, if I know one thing about the industry, it's that it's a moment. A flash in the pan. That's what's lovely about it. But it's hard, because one moment you're the hot thing, and the next moment — you're not. And there's no rhyme or reason for it.

 
Keira Knightley
© 2009–2013Quotes Privacy Policy | Contact