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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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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
Point
Materialistic
Character
Tolerate
Life
Strongest
Argument
View
Conditions
Views
American
Intolerable

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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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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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love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel.
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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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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.
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My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.
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Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist.
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Life for the European is a career for the American it is a hazard.
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From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people.
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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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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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The happy ending is our national belief.
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For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.
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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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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.
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To be disesteemed by people you don't have much respect for is not the worst fate.
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We are the hero of our own story.
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The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.
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Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.
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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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