Mignon McLaughlin (1913 – 1983)
American journalist and author.
We tell our children things which we know are not so, but which we wish were so.
Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.
Men prefer brief praise, pitched high; women are satisfied with praise in a lower key, just so it goes on and on.
The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.
Whatever we worship, short of God, is sure to be our undoing.
It does not undo harm to acknowledge that we have done it; but it undoes us not to acknowledge it.
I often pray, though I’m not really sure Anyone’s listening; and I phrase it carefully, just in case He’s literary.
The way the neurotic sees it: bars on his door mean that he's locked in; bars on your door mean that he's locked out.
The mark of the neurotic: to imagine that you're the only one who cares deeply for anything.
The plague of government is senile delinquency.
We have to call it "freedom": who'd die for "a lesser tyranny"?
When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one.
Every group feels strong once it has found a scapegoat.
My doctor is nice; every time I see him, I’m ashamed of what I think of doctors in general.
My thoughts, I guess, are bitter; who but the bitter have thoughts?
If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors.
A new wound makes all the old ones ache again.
In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.
We hear only half of what is said to us, understand only half of that, believe only half of that, and remember only half of that.
There are three iron links in the neurotic's chain: unloving, unlovable, unloved.