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There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.

Mary McCarthy

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Mary McCarthy
Age: 77 †
Born: 1912
Born: June 21
Died: 1989
Died: October 25
Author
Autobiographer
Critic
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Mary Therese McCarthy
Truths
Perception
Happiness
Truth
Without
Noticing
Perceived
Recognized

More quotes by Mary McCarthy

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We are a nation of 20 million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub.
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People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.
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With extramarital courtship, the deception was prolonged where it had been ephemeral, necessary where it had been frivolous, conspiratorial where it had been lonely.
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The erotic element always present in fashion, the kiss of loving labor on the body, is now overtly expressed by language. Belts hug or clasp necklines plunge jerseys bind. The word exciting tingles everywhere.
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For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.
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love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel.
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My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.
Mary McCarthy
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A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.
Mary McCarthy
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it's easier to forgive your enemies than to forgive your friends.
Mary McCarthy
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Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist.
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If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.
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We are the hero of our own story.
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Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.
Mary McCarthy
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The happy ending is our national belief.
Mary McCarthy
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this is the spirit of the enchantment under which Venice lies, pearly and roseate, like the Sleeping Beauty, changeless throughout the centuries, arrested, while the concrete forest of the modern world grows up around her.
Mary McCarthy
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The horror of Gandhi's murder lies not in the political motives behind it or in its consequences for Indian policy or for the future of non-violence the horror lies simply in the fact that any man could look into the face of this extraordinary person and deliberately pull a trigger.
Mary McCarthy
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Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.
Mary McCarthy
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The breakdown of our language, evident in the misuse, i.e., the misunderstanding of nouns and adjectives, is most grave, though perhaps not so conspicuous, in the handling of prepositions, those modest little connectives that hold the parts of a phrase or a sentence together. They are the joints of any language, what make it, literally, articulate.
Mary McCarthy
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It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief.
Mary McCarthy
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Illiteracy at the poverty level (mainly a matter of bad grammar) does not alarm me nearly as much as the illiteracy of the well-to-do.
Mary McCarthy