Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy
Mary Therese McCarthywas an American novelist, critic and political activist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 June 1912
CitySeattle, WA
CountryUnited States of America
believe self ideas
All ideas advanced to deal with the Florentine noise problem, the Florentine traffic problem, are Utopian, and nobody believes in them, just as nobody believed in Machiavelli's Prince, a Utopian image of the ideally self-interested despot.
hero believe next-week
As subjects, we all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story. We cannot believe that it is finished, that we are 'finished,' even though we may say so; we expect another chapter, another installment, tomorrow or next week.
friends believe people
The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends.
friendship believe growth-hormones
Yet friendship, I believe, is essential to intellectuals. It is probably the growth hormone the mind requires as it begins its activity of producing and exchanging ideas. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. In the course of my history, not love or marriage so much as friendship has promoted growth.
believe giving historical
The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around.
apartments argument assault basic bear character conditions crowded endure fact finds food foreigner lack large life material nation negative perpetual point senses strongest tolerate
The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is the fact that we tolerate conditions that are, from a negative point of view, intolerable. What the foreigner finds most objectionable in American life is its lack of basic comfort. No nation with any sense of material well-being would endure the food we eat, the cramped apartments we live in, the noise, the traffic, the crowded subways and buses. American life, in large cities, is a perpetual assault on the senses and the nerves; it is out of asceticism, out of unworldliness, precisely, that we bear it.
america american-author unfinished
Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.
force love work
You musn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.
imagination plums putting
I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake.
american-author form modern rule
Bureacracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.
consider facility intelligence intelligence-and-intellectuals seriously
We will need much better intelligence on this facility before we seriously consider any options.
appearance cultivation old-money
Old money is fully as moronic as new money but it has inherited an appearance of cultivation.
easter prayer latin
... it was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the words ofthe Mass and the litanies and the old Latin hymns, in the Easter lilies around the altar, rosaries, ornamented prayer books, votive lamps, holy cards stamped in gold and decorated with flower wreaths and a saint's picture.
hide looking pile
They're looking for a place to hide because they're so cold. It could be a pile of anything.