Quote

it's easier to forgive your enemies than to forgive your friends.

Mary McCarthy

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Enemy
Friends
Forgive
Enemies
Forgiveness
Forgiving
Easier

More quotes by Mary McCarthy

Image
With extramarital courtship, the deception was prolonged where it had been ephemeral, necessary where it had been frivolous, conspiratorial where it had been lonely.
Mary McCarthy
Image
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
Image
Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.
Mary McCarthy
Image
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
Image
The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers suspicion is reserved for friends.
Mary McCarthy
Image
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.
Mary McCarthy
Image
Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.
Mary McCarthy
Image
Sex annihilates identity, and the space given to sex in contemporary novels is an avowal of the absence of character.
Mary McCarthy
Image
love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel.
Mary McCarthy
Image
Modern neurosis began with the discoveries of Copernicus. Science made men feel small by showing him that the earth was not the center of the universe.
Mary McCarthy
Image
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
Image
For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.
Mary McCarthy
Image
The return to a favorite novel is generally tied up with changes in oneself that must be counted as improvements, but have the feel of losses. It is like going back to a favorite house, country, person nothing is where it belongs, including one's heart.
Mary McCarthy
Image
The dictator is also the scapegoat in assuming absolute authority, he assumes absolute guilt and the oppressed masses, groaning under the yoke, know themselves to be innocent as lambs, while they pray hypocritically for deliverance.
Mary McCarthy
Image
All dramatic realism is somewhat sadistic an audience is persuaded to watch something that makes it uncomfortable and from which no relief is offered - no laughter, no tears, no purgation.
Mary McCarthy
Image
If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil never anticipate it.
Mary McCarthy
Image
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
Image
An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question.
Mary McCarthy
Image
Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.
Mary McCarthy
Image
The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist.
Mary McCarthy