Quote

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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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
Centuries
Sleep
Concrete
Pearly
Beauty
Forests
Changeless
Lying
Throughout
Enchantment
Spirit
Lies
Venice
Around
Arrested
Like
Century
Sleeping
World
Modern
Forest
Grows

More quotes by 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.
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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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Driving a car, you are in danger of killing walking or standing, of being killed.
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Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.
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A good deal of education consists of unlearning-the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve.
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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.
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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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A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.
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For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.
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...the tourist Venice is Venice.
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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.
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Understanding is often a prelude to forgiveness, but they are not the same, and we often forgive what we cannot understand (seeing nothing else to do) and understand what we cannot pardon.
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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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The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers suspicion is reserved for friends.
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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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If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything.
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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.
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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.
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An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question.
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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.
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