Quote

I'm a middle-bracket person with a middle-bracket spouse / And we live together gaily in a middle-bracket house. / We've a fair-to-middlin' family we take the middle view / So we're manna sent from heaven to internal revenue.

Phyllis McGinley

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Phyllis McGinley
Age: 72 †
Born: 1905
Born: March 21
Died: 1978
Died: February 22
Author
Poet
Writer
Ontario
Oregon
Phyllis McGinley
Persons
Fair
Bracket
Person
View
Brackets
Live
Views
Spouse
Take
Middle
Revenue
Heaven
Internals
Family
Internal
House
Sent
Gaily
Together
Fairs
Manna

More quotes by Phyllis McGinley

Image
Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with one man.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
For the hearts of nurses are solid gold, / But their heels are flat and their hands are cold, / And their voices lilt with a lilt that's falser / Than the smile of an exhibition waltzer. / Yes, nurses can cure you, nurses restore you, / But nurses are bound that they do things for you.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Mere wealth, I am above it, / It is the reputation wide, / The playwright's pomp, the poet's pride / That eagerly I covet.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
God know that a mother need fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Ah, snug lie those that slumber Beneath Conviction's roof. Their floors are sturdy lumber, Their windows weatherproof. But I sleep cold forever And cold sleep all my kind, For I was born to shiver In the draft from an open mind.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Kindness is a virtue neither modern nor urban. One almost unlearns it in a city. Towns have their own beatitude they are not unfriendly they offer a vast and solacing anonymity or an equally vast and solacing gregariousness. But one needs a neighbor on whom to practice compassion.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but pass?. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
The mass of men live lives of quiet exasperation.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Wherever conversation's flowing, / Why must I feel it falls on me / To keep things going?
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing, peace is the measure.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Happiness puts on as many shapes as discontent, and there is nothing odder than the satisfaction of one's neighbor.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Pressed for rules and verities, All i recolelct are these: Feed a cold and starve a fever. Argue with no true believer. Think-too-long is never-act. Scratch a myth and find a fact.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
There is satisfaction in seeing one's household prosper in being both bountiful and provident.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Sons do not need you. They are always out of your reach, Walking strange waters.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
The human animal needs a freedom seldom mentioned, freedom from intrusion. He needs a little privacy as much as he wants understanding or vitamins or exercise or praise.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
I have read that during the process of canonization the Catholic Church demands proof of joy in the candidate, and although I have not been able to track down chapter and verse I like the suggestion that dourness is not a sacred attribute.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.
Phyllis McGinley
Image
Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade and to give men their freedom.
Phyllis McGinley