Famous Mary Mccarthy Quotations

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"Understanding is often a prelude to forgiveness, but they are not the same, and we often forgive what we cannot understand (seeing nothing else to do) and understand what we cannot pardon."
by Mary McCarthy
"Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"
by Mary McCarthy (about Lillian Hellman)
"People with bad consciences always fear the judgement of children."
by Mary McCarthy
"We all live in suspense from day to day In other words, you are the hero of your own story."
by Mary McCarthy
"We are the hero of our own story."
by Mary McCarthy
"A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world."
by Mary McCarthy
"Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted."
by Mary McCarthy
"Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior."
by Mary McCarthy
"The happy ending is our national belief."
by Mary McCarthy
"To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics."
by Mary McCarthy
"Congress"
by Mary McCarthy
"It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing."
by Mary McCarthy
"I shall never send for a priest or recite an Act of Contrition in my last moments. I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the ki..."
by Mary McCarthy
"In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons."
by Mary McCarthy


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