Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

When hope is hungry, everything feeds it

Men prefer brief praise, pitched high; women are satisfied with praise in a lower key, just so it goes on and on.

If you are brave too often, people will come to expect it of you.

Neurosis is no worse than a bad cold; you ache all over, and it's made you a mess, but you won't die from it.

Humiliation is a vast country of imprecise boundaries. If you think you're there, you are. The neurotic rule: when in doubt, go ahead and feel humiliated.

Theatre audiences can't be made to think and cry: at best, they can be made to think and laugh, or to feel and cry.

I know which side my bread is buttered on: the side which falls on the carpet.

A productive marriage requires falling in enjoy numerous occasions, usually with the identical man or woman.

True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it is a regret over motive.

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.

A love that lasts for twenty years may be better than love, but it isn't love.

We have to call it "freedom": who'd want to die for "a lesser tyranny"

In youth we are plagued by desire; in later years, by the desire to feel desire.

When we discuss those we love with those who do not love them, the end of love is near.

Others settle for small rewards; the neurotic must always go for broke.

Revenge leads to an empty fullness, like eating dirt.

There are three iron links in the neurotic's chain: unloving, unlovable, unloved.

Pull yourself together' is seldom said to anyone who can.

There are whole years for which I hope I'll never be cross-examined, for I could not give an alibi.

If only we could be old and sick while we're still young and healthy enough to put up with it!

Every creature stalks some other, catches it, and is caught.

Your children vividly remember every unkind thing you ever did to them, plus a few you really didn't.

Neurotics always feel as though they were going way up or way down, which is odd in people going sideways.

We often pray to be better, when in truth we only want to feel better.

Few of us write great novels; all of us live them.

The first-rate mind is always curious, compassionate, original, and pessimistic.

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 young do not need God, and the old cannot find Him.

Your children tell you casually years later what it would have killed you with worry to know at the time.

If you jot down every silly thought that pops into your mind, you will soon find out everything you most seriously believe.

We're seldom drawn to a character we admire; only to a personality we like.

Many marriages are simply working partnerships between businessmen and housekeepers.

Puritans will never believe it, but life is full of disagreeable things that aren't even good for you.

My doctor is nice; every time I see him, I'm ashamed of what I think of doctors in general.

So long as God reveals Himself, or doesn't, He is behaving like God.

When the pain is great enough, we will let anyone be doctor.

Beauty often fades, but seldom so swiftly as the joy it gives us.

We are all such a waste of our potential, like three-way lamps using one-way bulbs.

Most of us would rather risk catastrophe than read the directions.

Fields can lie fallow but we can't; we have less time.

Whatever we worship, short of God, is sure to be our undoing.

Tragedy isn't getting something, or failing to get it; it's losing something you already have.

We work for praise, and dawdle once we have it.

To talk easily with people, you must firmly believe that either you or they are interesting. And even then it's not easy.

The neurotic circles ceaselessly above a fogged-in airport.

How tired God must be of guilt and loneliness, for that is all we ever bring to Him.

Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.

Neurotics are anxiety prone, accident prone, and often just prone.