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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.

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
Decision
Understand
Someone
Going
Something
Resolved
Make
Realistic
Immediately
Tells

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Life for the European is a career for the American it is a hazard.
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In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.
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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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Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.
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love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel.
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Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.
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Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.
Mary McCarthy
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Whenever in history, equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.
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... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.
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For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved by a tornado.
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Morality did not keep well it required stable conditions it was costly it was subject to variations, and the market for it was uncertain.
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Calling someone a monster does not make him more guilty it makes him less so by classing him with beasts and devils.
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I really tried, or so I thought, to avoid lying, but it seemed to me that they forced it on me by the difference in their vision of things, so that I was always transposing reality for them into something they could understand.
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The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it were a myth for the credulous- poets and honeymooners.
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To be disesteemed by people you don't have much respect for is not the worst fate.
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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.
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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 strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable.
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If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil never anticipate it.
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The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep.
Mary McCarthy