Quotes from Mignon McLaughlin

Says the rude child: "No, I won't do it." Says the courteous grown-up: "Yes, I won't do it."

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

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

Each day, the American housewife turns toward television as toward a lover. She feels guilty about it, and well she might, for he's covered with warts and is only after her money.

Surrounded by people who love life, you love it too; surrounded by people who don't, you don't.

Your best work always seems to have been done by someone else.

It's hard to feel middle-aged, because how can you tell how long you are going to live?

What a shame that allowances have to stop with the teens: both those that are paid to us and those that are made for us.

I often pray, though I'm not really sure Anyone's listening; and I phrase it carefully, just in case He's literary.

Acedia is not in every dictionary; just in every heart.

The marriage of convenience has this to recommend it: we are better judges of convenience than we are of love.

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

Hot dogs always seem better out than at home; so do French-fried potatoes; so do your children.

Love requires a willingness to die; marriage, a willingness to live.

Every creatures stalks some other, and catches it, and is caught.

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

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.

Our strength is often composed of the weakness that we're damned if we are going to show.

The young are generally full of revolt, and are often pretty revolting about it.

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

What you can't get out of... Get into wholeheartedly.

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

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

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