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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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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
Nothing
Liberty
Bestowed
Good
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Conceived
Opinion
Inherent
Literature
Current
State
Currents
Freedom
Gift
Individual
Behavior
States
Trust
Pending

More quotes by Mary McCarthy

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We are a nation of 20 million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub.
Mary McCarthy
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Venice is the worlds unconscious: a misers glittering hoard, guarded by a Beast whose eyes are made of white agate, and by a saint who is really a prince who has just slain a dragon.
Mary McCarthy
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Life for the European is a career for the American it is a hazard.
Mary McCarthy
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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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Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.
Mary McCarthy
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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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I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that - how to express this - you really must make the self.
Mary McCarthy
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...the tourist Venice is Venice.
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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Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.
Mary McCarthy
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For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.
Mary McCarthy
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I shall never send for a priest or recite an Act of Contrition in my last moments. I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.
Mary McCarthy
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America is indeed a revelation, though not quite the one that was planned. Given a clean slate, man, it was hoped, would write the future. Instead, he has written his past.
Mary McCarthy
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What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?
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.
Mary McCarthy
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The happy ending is our national belief.
Mary McCarthy
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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.
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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most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know it made them feel ignorant.
Mary McCarthy
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We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour in other words, we are the hero of our own story.
Mary McCarthy