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
lying tubs baths
Shunning the upstart shower, / The cold and cursory scrub, / I celebrate the power / That lies within the Tub.
book thinking clothes
Borrow my umbrellas, my clothes, my money, and I will likely not think of them again. But borrow my books and I will be on your track like a bloodhound until they are returned.
book maturity needs
There are books that one needs maturity to enjoy just as there are books an adult can come on too late to savor.
suffering ingredients hospitality
suffering is as necessary to entertaining as vermouth is to a Martini - a small but vital ingredient.
heart home america
The East is the hearthside of America. Like any home, therefore, it has the defects of its virtues. Because it is a long-lived-inhouse, it bursts its seams, is inconvenient, needs constant refurbishing. And some of the family resources have been spent. To attain the privacy that grown-up people find so desirable, Easterners live a harder life than people elsewhere. Today it is we and not the frontiersman who must be rugged to survive.
art taken history
History must always be taken with a grain of salt. It is, after all, not a science but an art ...
cake caviar dinner
Oh, princes thrive on caviar, the poor on whey and curds, / And politicians, I infer, must eat their windy words. / It's crusts that feed the virtuous, it's cake that comforts sinners, / But writers live on bread and praise at Literary Dinners.
views house heaven
I'm a middle-bracket person with a middle-bracket spouse / And we live together gaily in a middle-bracket house. / We've a fair-to-middlin' family; we take the middle view; / So we're manna sent from heaven to internal revenue.
men champion tolerance
I am he / Who champions total liberty - / Intolerance being, ma'am, a state / No tolerant man can tolerate.
girl hair heaven
Of the small gifts of heaven, / It seems to me a more than equal share / At birth was given / To girls with curly hair.
summer home successful
The successful truck gardener can never go out to dinner in the summer or spend a week end away, because his conscience tells him he has to be at home eating up his corn or packaging his beans for the freezer.
pride reputation wealth
Mere wealth, I am above it, / It is the reputation wide, / The playwright's pomp, the poet's pride / That eagerly I covet.
marriage mistake thinking
Marriage is a lot of things-an alliance, a sacrament, a comedy, or a mistake; but it is definitely not a partnership because that implies equal gain. And every right-thinking woman knows the profit in matrimony is by all odds hers.
optimism trends troops
O, merry is the Optimist, With the troops of courage leaguing. But a dour trend In any friend Is somehow less fatiguing.