Famous Phyllis Mcginley Quotations

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"A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy."
by Phyllis McGinley
"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 important to the point of necessity when they are adolescents."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Sticks and stones are hard on bones, aimed with angry art, words can sting like anything but silence breaks the heart."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"To be a housewife is ... a difficult, a wrenching, sometimes an ungrateful job if it is looked on only as a job. Regarded as a profession, it is the noblest as it is the most ancient of the catalogue. Let none persuade us differently or the world is lost indeed."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Ladies with curly hair have time to spare"
by Phyllis McGinley
"The knowingness of little girls hidden underneath their curls."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"The system -- the American one, at least -- is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"The thing to remember about fathers is, they're men. A girl has to keep it in mind: They are dragon-seekers, bent on improbable rescues. Scratch any father, you find someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, believing change is a threat -- like your first shoes with heels on, like your first bicycle I it took such months to get."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!"
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Say what you will, making marriage work is a woman's business. The institution was invented to do her homage; it was contrived for her protection. Unless she accepts it as such --as a beautiful, bountiful, but quite unequal association --the going will be hard indeed."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"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."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"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."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Who could deny that privacy is a jewel? It has always been the mark of privilege, the distinguishing feature of a truly urbane culture. Out of the cave, the tribal teepee, the pueblo, the community fortress, man emerged to build himself a house of his own with a shelter in it for himself and his diversions. Every age has seen it so. The poor might have to huddle together in cities for need's sake, and the frontiersman cling to his neighbors for the sake of protection. But in each civilization, as it advanced, those who could afford it chose the luxury of a withdrawing-place."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Frigidity is largely nonsense. It is this generation's catchword, one only vaguely understood and constantly misused. Frigid women are few. There is a host of diffident and slow-ripening ones."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Sticks and stones are hard on bones aimed with angry art. Words can sting like anything but silence breaks the heart."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but pass?. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick."
by Phyllis Mcginley
"Say what you will, making marriage work is a woman's business. The institution was invented to do her homage; it was contrived for her protect..."
by Phyllis McGinley
"The knowingness of little girls Is hidden underneath their curls."
by Phyllis McGinley
"The system—the American one, at least—is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kinder..."
by Phyllis McGinley


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