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Quote by Mary McCarthy

“it's easier to forgive your enemies than to forgive your friends.”

Quote by Mary McCarthy

Author

Mary McCarthy was a prominent American author born on June 21, 1912, and passed away on October 25, 1989. Known for her incisive social criticism and nuanced portrayal of human nature, she is considered one of the most influential figures in 20th-century American literature. more

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“The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends.”

People Believe Desire Friends Stranger Suspicion Intercourse Reserved Prerequisites

Book:The hounds of summer and other stories: Mary McCarthy's short fiction

Source: The hounds of summer and other stories: Mary McCarthy's short fiction

“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.”

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Author:Mary McCarthy

“The fact is that gardening, more than most of our other activities except sometimes love-making, confronts us with the inexplicable.”

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“The furniture and trappings in the apartment are all in a state of flux - here today, gone tomorrow. Nothing is anchored to its place, not even the coffee-pot, which floats off and returns, on the tide of the signora's marine nature.”

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Book:Venice observed

Source: Venice observed

“this is the spirit of the enchantment under which Venice lies, pearly and roseate, like the Sleeping Beauty, changeless throughout the centuries, arrested, while the concrete forest of the modern world grows up around her.”

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Book:Venice observed

Source: Venice observed

“Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.”

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Book:Venice observed

Source: Venice observed

“The breakdown of our language, evident in the misuse, i.e., the misunderstanding of nouns and adjectives, is most grave, though perhaps not so conspicuous, in the handling of prepositions, those modest little connectives that hold the parts of a phrase or a sentence together. They are the joints of any language, what make it, literally, articulate.”

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Book:Occasional prose

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“Our language, once homely and colloquial, seeks to aggrandize our meanest activities with polysyllabic terms or it retreats from frankness into a stammering verbosity.”

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Book:Occasional prose

Source: Occasional prose

“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.”

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Author:Mary McCarthy

“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.”

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Book:The humanist in the bathtub

Source: The humanist in the bathtub