Quotes from Mignon McLaughlin

Spiritual sloth, or acedia, was known as The Sin of the Middle Ages. It's the sin of my middle age, too.

Don't be yourself — be someone a little nicer.

Every American child should grow up knowing a second language, preferably English.

People find it hard to be both comic and serious, though life manages it easily enough.

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

Without enthusiasm, virtue functions not at all, and vice only poorly.

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

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.

Good food, good sex, good digestion, good sleep: to these basic animal pleasures, man has added nothing but the good cigarette.

The neurotic longs to touch bottom, so at least he won't have that to worry about anymore.

The time to begin most things is ten years ago.

When you let money speak for you, it drowns out anything else you meant to say.

No woman wants to see herself too clearly.

Spring, summer, and fall fill us with hope; winter alone reminds us of the human condition.

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

If you made a list of reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a hell of a lot of overlapping.

When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one.

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

Women gather together to wear silly hats, eat dainty food, and forget how unresponsive their husbands are. Men gather to talk sports, eat heavy food, and forget how demanding their wives are. Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.

Most of us can easily do two things at once; what's all but impossible is to do one thing at once.

People are made of flesh and blood and a miracle fibre called courage.

People are like birds: on the wing, all beautiful; up close, all beady little eyes.

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.

So long as God reveals Himself, or doesn't, He is behaving like God.