Margaret Halsey
Margaret Halsey
Margaret Halseywas an American writer who lived in the United Kingdom for a short time. Her first book With Malice Towards Somegrew out of her experiences there. It was a witty and humorous bestseller, selling 600,000 copies. It won one of the early National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1938, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
jobs creative ruins
the American family is failing in its job of turning out stable human beings. ... It is failing because Americans do not dare to cultivate in themselves those characteristics which would make family life creative and rewarding. To do so, would ruin them financially.
attitude generosity quality
the psychological attitudes which are indispensable in the American market place are disastrous to family life. Family life ... requires yieldingness, generosity, sympathy, altruism, tenderness-all the qualities, in fact, which lead straight to bankruptcy. ... the American family is tragically out of gear with the profit structure which has mushroomed up around it.
fear spoons knees
My knees could have been stirred with a spoon.
government quality ashes
the whole flavor and quality of the American representative government turns to ashes on the tongue, if one regards that government as simply an inferior and rather second-rate sort of corporation.
men brotherhood-of-man magnificence
If you embark on a project as magnificent in concept as the brotherhood of man, it is foolish not to anticipate difficulties of proportionate magnificence.
peace practice people
In practice, there is nothing especially dramatic in people getting along well together.
hero democracy doe
democracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.
democracy demand suspension
Democracy makes many taxing demands on its practitioners, but suspension of the intelligence is not one of them.
wind tables rags
the conversation whipped gaily around the table like rags in a high wind.
character people littles
Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters.
communication perfection tides
We know of our own knowledge that we are human beings, and, as such, imperfect. But we are bathed by the communications industry in a ceaseless tide of inhuman, impossible perfection.
patterns liquor employed
Employed as I had been employing it, liquor is a fixative of old patterns ...
drinking flocks spokes
when I spoke of having a drink, it was a euphemism for having a whole flock of them.
white anxiety fifty
I would have felt more comfortable on a girder fifty floors above the street, catching white-hot rivets in a pail.