Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

After the chills and fever of love, how nice is the 98.6 degrees of marriage.

Too much money is as demoralizing as too little, and there's no such thing as exactly enough.

There are now electrical appliances with the main unit so sealed in that it cannot be got at for repair. There have always been human beings like that.

Without enthusiasm, virtue functions not at all, and vice only poorly.

If I knew why I worried so much, I wouldn't worry.

If the second marriage really succeeds, the first one didn't really fail.

Don't be yourself - be someone a little nicer.

Once you become self-conscious, there is no end to it; once you start to doubt, there is no room for anything else.

What a shame that allowances have to stop with the teens: both those that are paid to us and those that are made for us.

If it came true, it wasn't much of a dream.

The fear of being laughed at makes cowards of us all.

The neurotic doesn't know how to cope with his emotional bills; some he keeps paying over and over, others he never pays at all.

Ma-ma does everything for the baby, who responds by saying Da-da first.

We are seldom happy with what we now have, but would go to pieces if we lost any part of it.

When "Why not do it?" barely outweighs "Why do it?" — don't do it.

Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.

Altruism is a hard master, but so is opportunism.

Forget about calories - everything makes thin people thinner, and fat people fatter.

Women are never landlocked: they're always mere minutes away from the briny deep of tears.

All love is probationary, a fact which frightens women and exhilarates men.

The next voice you hear will undoubtedly be your own.

Your best work always seems to have been done by someone else.

The poor have the same basic pleasures as the rich, and the rich will always resent it.

Boredom is often the cause of promiscuity, and always its result.

Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.

The only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother's Day are the good ones.

The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.

Good food, good sex, good digestion, good sleep: to these basic animal pleasures, man has added nothing but the good cigarette.

It's terrifying to see someone inside of whom a vital spring seems to have been broken. It's particularly terrifying to see him in your mirror.

We cough because we can't help it, but others do it on purpose.

Those who turn to God for comfort may find comfort but I do not think they will find God.

There's only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that's a writer sitting down to write.

It must infuriate our children to see us always so much more forbearing with everybody else's.

My religious position: I think that God could do a lot better, and I'm willing to give Him the chance.

If you can tell anyone about it, it's not the worst thing you ever did.

Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul.

Money: in its absence, we are coarse; in its presence, we are vulgar.

The neurotic keeps minute track of his enemies; it is only his friends he is careless about.

The neurotic listens to weather reports about Small Craft Warnings, and he thinks: They're talking about me.

If your children spend most of their time in other people's houses, you're lucky; if they all congregate at your house, you're blessed.

Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head.

Women are the right age for just a few years; men, for most of their lives.

Things are never so bad that they can't get worse. But they're sometimes so bad they can't get better.

I've been hiding from God, and I'm appalled to find how easy it is.

We have a terror of seeming to exert ourselves, lest it be noticed that we exerted ourselves and did not succeed.

With each passing year, one has less to say, and knows better how to say it.

Of all second-class citizens, neurotics are the only ones who are so by choice.

The neurotic would like to trust his analyst - if only because he's paying him so much money. But he can't - because if the analyst really cared, he'd be doing it for nothing.