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Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.

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
Like
Moses
Waters
Floating
City
Among
Cities
Basket
Upon
Baskets
Water
Venice

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A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.
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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.
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most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know it made them feel ignorant.
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Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.
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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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What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake.
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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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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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it came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality, the sole form of intellectuality of which they were capable. It represented, in a rudimentary way, the ability to make categories, to generalize.
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Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.
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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.
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The happy ending is our national belief.
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