Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

After he has had his tantrum, the neurotic expects those around him to feel friendly and relaxed; after all, he does.

The plague of government is senile delinquency.

Failure can get to be a rather comfortable old friend.

Life marks us all down, so it's just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves.

Healthy parakeets have the nervous energy of tennis players.

The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.

We can never at any time absorb more love than we're ready for.

To smoke or not to smoke: I can make of either a life-work.

Most of us can easily do two things at once; what's all but impossible is to do one thing at once.

Women polish the silver and water the plants and wait to be really needed.

Few women care what a man looks like, and a good thing too.

Don't look for God where He is needed most; if you didn't bring Him there, He isn't there.

Life is a mixed blessing, which we vainly try to unmix.

A hypochondriac is one who has a pill for everything except what ails him.

Naturally, the neurotic wants you to love him twice as much, for he's going to cut it in half anyway.

Mumps, measles, and puppy love are terrible after twenty.

The woman just ahead of you at the supermarket checkout has all the delectable groceries you didn't even know they carried.

Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality.

Women who feel naked without their lipstick are well over thirty.

People find it hard to be both comic and serious, though life manages it easily enough.

Surrounded by people who love life, you love it too; surrounded by people who don't, you don't.

We can never understand other people's motives, nor their furniture.

Not for nothing does the neurotic suffer - but not for anything very much, either.

When you let money speak for you, it drowns out anything else you meant to say.

Flesh goes on pleasuring us, and humiliating us, right to the end.

How can a man marry wisely in his twenties? The girl he's going to wind up wanting hasn't even been born.

No good neurotic finds it difficult to be both opinionated and indecisive.

Your money, or your life. We know what to do when a burglar makes this demand of us, but not when God does.

Says the rude child: "No, I won't do it." Says the courteous grown-up: "Yes, I won't do it.

The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone.

The time to begin most things is ten years ago.

No one can understand love who has not experienced infatuation. And no one can understand infatuation, no matter how many times he has experienced it.

At the beginning of a love affair, not even the neurotic is neurotic.

The neurotic's strongest fantasy is that he has no fantasies. The real is very real to him, the unreal even more so.

A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel: expensive, but worth it.

We are keenly aware of the faults of our friends, but if they like us enough it doesn't matter.

The neurotic lies awake at night, composing letters to those he hates. He seldom thinks of dropping a line to those he loves.

There are always a few people you do a lot for, and a few who do a lot for you, but they're not the same people.

How strange that the young should always think the world is against them - when in fact that is the only time it is for them.

What we forgive too freely doesn't stay forgiven.

If you hate your lot but wouldn't trade it, it's not your lot you hate.

There's something in every atheist, itching to believe, and something in every believer, itching to doubt.

Philosophy teaches a man that he can't take it with him; taxes teach him he can't leave it behind either.

Be glad that you're greedy; the national economy would collapse if you weren't.

Anything you do from the heart enriches you, but sometimes not till years later.

Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth: we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money.

Women are afraid of mice and of murder, and of very little in between.

At night, neurotics may toil not, but oh how they spin!