Quotes from Mignon McLaughlin

Throughout our lives, we see in the mirror the same innocent trusting face we have seen there since childhood.

A love that lasts for twenty years may be better than love, but it isn't love.

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

Always live up to your standards — by lowering them, if necessary.

Don't fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever, or not at all.

"What's for dinner?" is the only question many husbands ask their wives, and the only one to which they care about the answer.

Flesh goes on pleasuring us, and humiliating us, right to the end.

My doctor is nice; every time I see him, I'm ashamed of what I think of doctors in general.

Some marriages break up, and some do not, and in our world you can usually explain the former better than the latter.

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

The soul may sleep and the body still be happy, but only in youth.

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

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

They threaten me with lung cancer, and still I smoke and smoke. If they'd only threaten me with hard work, I might stop.

Mumps, measles, and puppy love are terrible after twenty.

Affairs are just as disillusioning as marriage, and much less restful.

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

There's nothing wrong with most men's egos that the kowtowing of a headwaiter can't cure.

The neurotic is always half-drowning in anxiety, and always being half-rescued.

Fields can lie fallow, but we can't; we have less time.

A woman will do anything to keep a pretty figure, but hardly anything to get one.

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

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

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.