Quotes from Phyllis McGinley

Words may sting, but silence is what breaks the heart.

Gossip isn't scandal and its not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same

The other day I chanced to meet An angry man upon the street — A man of wrath, a man of war, A man who truculently bore Over his shoulder, like a lance, A banner labeled "Tolerance.

Ah, snug lie those that slumber beneath conviction's roof. Their floors are sturdy lumber, their windows weatherproof. But I sleep cold forever, and cold sleep all my kind, For I was born to shiver in the draft from an open mind. Born nakedly to shiver in the draft of an open mind.

Housewives more than any other race deserve well-furnished minds. They have to live in them such a lot of the time.

Wifehood, the house, a family they are woman's traditional concern and each in its way represents one of the other great three- faith, hope, charity - which St. Paul sets down as the virtues of earth. (For how can one rear a family without faith? Or build a roof without hope? Or remain a proper wife without charity?) They are life's most vital elements and no ordered world can endure without them.

The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.

Gardening has compensations out of all proportion to its goals. It is creation in the pure sense.

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.