Mignon McLaughlin (1913 – 1983)
American journalist and author.
Others settle for small rewards; the neurotic must always go for broke.
In retrospect, our triumphs could as easily have happened to someone else; but our defeats are uniquely our own.
We climb mountains because they are there, and worship God because He is not.
Women flirt to keep their stock high, men to get somewhere.
If you have to do it every day, for God’s sake learn to do it well.
Once you become self-conscious, there is no end to it; once you start to doubt, there is no room for anything else.
A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.
Air that has been much quarreled in becomes very hard to breathe.
The fault we admit to is seldom the fault we have, but it has a certain relationship to it, a somewhat similar shape, like that of a sleeve to an arm.
When a stranger identifies you from a friend's description, it's just as well you didn't hear the description.
Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones.
Cash is the one gift everyone despises and no one turns down.
Life is a mixed blessing, which we vainly try to unmix.
The time to begin most things is ten years ago.
Being Irish is, no matter how real, a pose.
Love is the silent saying and saying of a single name.
Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality.
Most of us can easily do two things at once; what’s all but impossible is to do one thing at once.
The past is rich in lessons from which we would greatly profit except that the present is always so full of Special Circumstances.
You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.