Quotes from Marya Mannes

An American who can make money, invoke God, and be no better than his neighbor, has nothing to fear but truth itself.

In an age where the lowered eyelid is just a sign of fatigue, the delicate game of love is pining away. Freud and flirtation are poor companions.

For every five well-adjusted and smoothly functioning Americans, there are two who never had the chance to discover themselves. It may well be because they have never been alone with themselves.

It's never what you say, but how you make it sound sincere.

Generosity with strings is not generosity: it is a deal.

You cannot know what you cannot feel.

It is privilege of living to be ... acutely, agonizingly conscious of the moment that is always present and always passing.

Artists never make wars. They are too busy making life out of the matter of their visions.

All great lovers are articulate, and verbal seduction is the surest road to actual seduction.

Borders are scratched across the hearts of men By strangers with a calm, judicial pen, And when the borders bleed we watch with dread The lines of ink across the map turn red.

If American men are obsessed with money, American women are obsessed with weight. The men talk of gain, the women talk of loss, and I do not know which talk is the more boring.

It is a marvellous thing to be physically a woman if only to know the marvels of a man.

The world of sight is still limitless. It is the artist who limits vision to the cramped dimensions of his own ego.

Art can excite, titillate, please, entertain, and sometimes shock; but its ultimate function is to ennoble.

In aid, the proper attitude is one omitting gratitude

I would call an intellectual one whose instrument of work - his mind - is also his major source of pleasure; a man whose entertainment is his intelligence.

A man at his desk in a room with a closed door is a man at work. A woman at a desk in any room is available.

People on horses look better than they are. People in cars look worse than they are.

the car, by bisecting the human outline, diminishes it, producing a race of half-people in a motion not of their own making

The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other.

It is not enough to show people how to live better; there is a mandate for any group with enormous powers of communication to show people how to be better.

In our society those who are in reality superior in intelligence can be accepted by their fellows only if they pretend they are not.

performance is an act of faith.

It is television's primary damage that it provides ten million children with the same fantasy, ready-made and on a platter.