Mignon McLaughlin famous quotes

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Love #Relationship #Anniversary

We waste a lot of time running after people we could have caught by just standing still.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Running #Time #People

For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Life #Night #Literature

In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Love #Marriage #Broken Heart

Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Inspirational #Motivational #Confidence

Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Hate #Shopping #Two

Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Hope #Feelings

It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Inspirational #Change #Fear

The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Shock

A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel: expensive, but worth it.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Firsts #Hotel #Rate

There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Motivational #Women #Procrastination

Courage can't see around corners but goes around them anyway.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Courage #Army #Bravery

The hardest learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Love #Life #Marriage

Whatever we worship, short of God, is sure to be our undoing.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Worship #Undoing

Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Love #Beautiful #Depressing

Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Character #Yesterday #Effort

A perfect marriage is one in which "I'm sorry" is said just often enough.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Sorry #Wedding Anniversary #Perfect

If there is something you must do and you cannot do it, you cannot do anything else.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

Few of us could bear to have ourselves for neighbors.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Society #Bears #Neighbor

In any family, measles are less contagious than bad habits.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Habit #Bad Habits #Contagious

Anything you lose automatically doubles in value.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Life #Values

A parent who has never apologized to his children is a monster. If he's always apologizing, his children are monsters.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Children #Parent #Monsters

The proud man can learn humility, but he will be proud of it.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Humility

We are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Trust #Bravery #Literature

How can a man marry wisely in his twenties? The girl he's going to wind up wanting hasn't even been born.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Girl #Men #Wind

The time to begin most things is ten years ago.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Time #Years

We are seldom happy with what we now have, but would go to pieces if we lost any part of it.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Happy #Pieces #Lost

The chief reason for drinking is the desire to behave in a certain way, and to be able to blame it on alcohol.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Drinking #Alcohol #Desire

If an article is attractive, or useful, or inexpensive, they'll stop making it tomorrow; if it's all three, they stopped making it yesterday.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Yesterday #Three #Tomorrow

A new wound makes all the old ones ache again.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Broken Heart #Ache #Wounds

A woman asks little of love: only that she be able to feel like a heroine.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Women #Littles #Able

A husband only worries about a particular Other Man; a wife distrusts her whole species.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Husband #Women #Wife

I've been hiding from God, and I'm appalled to find how easy it is.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Godly #Hiding #Easy

Don't look for God where He is needed most; if you didn't bring Him there, He isn't there.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Godly #Looks #Needed

Your children vividly remember every unkind thing you ever did to them, plus a few you really didn't.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Children #Parent #Remember

The ideal home: big enough for you to hear the children, but not very well.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Children #Home #Parent

How strange that the young should always think the world is against them - when in fact that is the only time it is for them.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Teenage #Thinking #World

Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Family #Understanding #Bitterness

Love is often gentle, desire always a rage.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Love #Desire #Rage

Life is a mixed blessing, which we vainly try to unmix.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Blessing #Trying #Life Is

Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Differences #Helping

No one can understand love who has not experienced infatuation. And no one can understand infatuation, no matter how many times he has experienced it.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Love #Matter #Infatuation

Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Soul #Bypass #Confession

The woman just ahead of you at the supermarket checkout has all the delectable groceries you didn't even know they carried.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Shopping #Groceries #Supermarkets

When the pain is great enough, we will let anyone be doctor.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Pain #Philosophy #Philosophical

We always prefer war on our own terms to peace on someone else's.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#War #Compassion #Term

In life, as in restaurants, we swallow a lot of indigestible stuff just because it comes with the dinner.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Life #Stuff #Dinner

Desire is in men a hunger, in women only an appetite.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Sex #Men #Desire

Men prefer brief praise, pitched high; women are satisfied with praise in a lower key, just so it goes on and on.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Men #Keys #Goes On

Men really prefer reasonably attractive women; they go after the sensational ones to impress other men.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Love #Men #Attractive

If I knew what I was so anxious about, I wouldn't be so anxious.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Worry #Anxiety #Anxious

Life marks us all down, so it's just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Confidence #Mark #Wells

When women feel they have learned to forgive their mothers - and men, their fathers - all it usually means is that they've decided to allow themselves the same kind of behavior.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Mother #Father #Mean

Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn't either.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Play #Groups #Novel

The head never rules the heart, but just becomes its partner in crime.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Best Love #Women #Heart

There are a handful of people whom money won't spoil, and we all count ourselves among them.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Money #People #Literature

Albert Einstein when asked what he considered to be the most powerful force in the universe answered: Compound interest! What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Powerful #Literature #Want

We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Cities #Firsts #Literature

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Sex #Men #Average

Most sermons sound to me like commercials - but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Atheist #Literature #Sound

Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Courage #Women #Brave

There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Years #Age #Gone

Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Freedom #Anger #Honor

If you have to do it every day, for God's sake learn to do it well.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Integrity #Sake #Wells

A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#New York #Humorous #Car

Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Being Yourself #Kindness #Littles

The best work is done with the heart breaking, or overflowing.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Heart #Writing #Joy

Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Love #Relationship #Valentines Day

Once you become self-conscious, there is no end to it; once you start to doubt, there is no room for anything else.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Confidence #Being Yourself #Anxiety

Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Love #Dream #Children

A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Book #Writing #Reviews

We lavish on animals the love we are afraid to show to people. They might not return it; or worse, they might.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Animal #People #Might

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Business #Communication #Silence

Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Time #Children #Memorable

It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Wisdom #Ignorance #Innocence

Money is much more exciting than anything it buys.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Fairy #Exciting #Tooth Fairy

No good neurotic finds it difficult to be both opinionated and indecisive.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Indecisive #Difficult #Neurotic

Whenever we safely land in a plane, we promise God a little something.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Land #Promise #Pilots

Most of us would rather risk catastrophe than read the directions....
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Risk #Catastrophe

You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Writing #Pages #Leafs

The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive - perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Death #Alive #Purpose

Mumps, measles, and puppy love are terrible after twenty.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Funny Love #Twenties #Puppy

We are all such a waste of our potential, like three-way lamps using one-way bulbs.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Confidence #Way #Waste

Loneliness, insomnia, and change: the fear of these is even worse than the reality.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Loneliness #Insomnia #Reality

If your children spend most of their time in other people's houses, you're lucky; if they all congregate at your house, you're blessed.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Family #Children #Blessed

Few of us write great novels; all of us live them.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Life #Writing #Novel

What you can't get out of, get into wholeheartedly.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Effort #Wholeheartedly

It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Friendship #Believe #Real Friends

Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Fun #Children #Real

Your children tell you casually years later what it would have killed you with worry to know at the time.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Time #Children #Years

If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Time #Pain #Doctors

Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Children #Fake #Morality

We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Love #Matter #Infatuation

Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Perfection #Littles #Tough

We welcome passion, for the mind is briefly let off duty.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Passion #Mind #Welcome

Anywhere you go liking everyone, everyone will be likeable.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Positive Thinking #Thinking #Likeable

The only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother's Day are the good ones.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Mom #Mother #Safe

Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Opportunity #Boredom #Matter

There's something in every atheist, itching to believe, and something in every believer, itching to doubt.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Atheist #Believe #Doubt

All love is probationary, a fact which frightens women and exhilarates men.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

#Love #Men #Love Is