Quotes from Mignon McLaughlin

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

How strange that the young should always think the world is against them - when in fact that is the only time it is for them.

The proud man can learn humility, but he will be proud of it.

Only where children gatheris there any real chance of fun.

Courage can't see around corners, but goes around them anyway.

What we forgive too freely doesn't stay forgiven.

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

Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before.

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

There are always a few people you do a lot for, and a few who do a lot for you, but they're not the same people.

The fault we admit to is seldom the fault we have, but it has a certain relationship to it, a somewhat similar shape, like that of a sleeve to an arm.

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

In church, sacred music would make believers of us all — but preachers can be counted on to restore the balance.

Love is the silent saying and saying of a single name.

Nostalgia for what we have lost is more bearable than nostalgia for what we have never had, for the first involves knowledge and pleasure, the second only ignorance and pain.

For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance.

With each passing year, one has less to say, and knows better how to say it.

Few of us could bear to have ourselves for neighbors.

Every society honours its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.

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

Life marks us all down, so it's just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves.

Anything you lose automatically doubles in value.

Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn't either.

Few of us write great novels; all of us live them.