Phyllis McGinley
Phyllis McGinley
Phyllis McGinleywas a Pulitzer Prizewinning American author of children's books and poetry. Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth21 March 1905
CountryUnited States of America
broken lovers ethics
A lover would find life less broken apart after a misguided love affair if they could feel that they had been sinful rather than foolish.
mother children women
God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.
mother writing phones
The Enemy, who wears her mother's usual face and confidential tone, has access; doubtless stares into her writing case and listens on the phone.
thieves aging
Time is the thief you cannot banish.
baby brain intuition
A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can't fold a paper in a crowded train.
children ambition towers
Children from ten to twenty don't want to be understood. Their whole ambition is to feel strange and alien and misinterpreted so that they can live austerely in some stone tower of adolescence, their privacies unviolated.
heart glasses today
Tomorrow will come and today will pass, / But the hearts of the young are brittle as glass.
childhood sorrow forget
The ability to forget a sorrow is childhood's most enchanting feature.
confusion childhood states
If childhood is still a state, it is now chiefly a state of confusion.
girl children boys
For little boys are rancorous When robbed of any myth, And spiteful and cantankerous To all their kin and kith. But little girls can draw conclusions And profit from their lost illusions.
garden rivers spiders
I sing Connecticut, her charms / Of rivers, orchards, blossoming ridges. / I sing her gardens, fences, farms, / Spiders and midges.
loss night important
Meanness inherits a set of silverware and keeps it in the bank. Economy uses it only on important occasions, for fear of loss. Thrift sets the table with it every night for pure pleasure, but counts the butter spreaders before they are put away.
father believe qualms-about
Scratch any father, you find / Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, / Believing change is a threat ...
friends mistake errors
Relations are errors that Nature makes. / Your spouse you can put on the shelf. / But your friends, dear friends, are the quaint mistakes / You always commit yourself.