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.
laughter self wind
Laughter is the great antidote for self-pity, maybe a specific for the malady, yet probably it does tend to dry one's feelings out a little, as if by exposing them to a vigorous wind ...
strong self realization
For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.
thinking self quests
I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that you really must make the self
good-night selfish sleep
The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep.
inspirational-life self-esteem hero
We are the hero of our own story.
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.