Whenever in history, equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.
Mary McCarthyLeisure 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 McCarthyAny sizeable Portuguese town looks like a superstitious bride's finery - something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.
Mary McCarthyThe fact is that gardening, more than most of our other activities except sometimes love-making, confronts us with the inexplicable.
Mary McCarthy