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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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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
Demands
Realization
Worthy
Demand
Authority
Lucifer
Strong
Opponent
Self
Rebel
Opponents

More quotes by 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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What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?
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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Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.
Mary McCarthy
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The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly.
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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...the tourist Venice is Venice.
Mary McCarthy
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People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.
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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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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Like Michelangelo and Cellini, Florentines of every station are absorbed in acquiring real estate: a little apartment that can be rented to foreigners a farm that will supply the owner with oil, wine, fruit, and flowers for the house.
Mary McCarthy
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... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.
Mary McCarthy
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I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets.
Mary McCarthy
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If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil never anticipate it.
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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Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.
Mary McCarthy
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A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.
Mary McCarthy
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Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Spicy court-memoirs, the lives of gallant ladies, recollections of an ex-nun, a monk's confession, an atheist's repentance, true-to-life accounts of prostitution and bastardy gave our ancestors a penny peep into the forbidden room.
Mary McCarthy
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Feminism is ridiculous. Feminists are silly idealists who want to be on top. There is no real equality in sexual relationships - someone always wins.
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