Quote

How happy is the Optimist / To whom life shows its sunny side / His horse may lose, his ship may list, / But he always sees the funny side.

Phyllis McGinley

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Phyllis McGinley
Age: 72 †
Born: 1905
Born: March 21
Died: 1978
Died: February 22
Author
Poet
Writer
Ontario
Oregon
Phyllis McGinley
Sides
Optimism
Happy
Lists
Funny
Ships
Shows
Sees
May
Horse
Sunny
Always
Lose
Optimist
Life
Side
Ship
Loses
List

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Let others, worn with living / And living's aftermath, / Take Sleep to heal the heart's distress, / Take Love to be their comfortress, / Take Song or Food or Fancy Dress, / But I shall take a Bath.
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Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.
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Say what you will, making a marriage work is a woman's business.
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Of the small gifts of heaven, / It seems to me a more than equal share / At birth was given / To girls with curly hair.
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The knowingness of little girls, is hidden underneath their curls.
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Love or perish we are told and we tell ourselves. The phrase is true enough so long as we do not interpret it as Mingle or be a failure.
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Children are forced to live very rapidly in order to live at all. They are given only a few years in which to learn hundreds of thousands of things about life and the planet and themselves.
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Aunts are discreet, a little shy / By instinct. They forbear to pry.
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Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.
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Gardening has compensations out of all proportion to its goals. It is creation in the pure sense.
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Mere wealth, I am above it, / It is the reputation wide, / The playwright's pomp, the poet's pride / That eagerly I covet.
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The saints differ from us in their exuberance, the excess of our human talents. Moderation is not their secret. It is in the wildness of their dreams, the desperate vitality of their ambitions, that they stand apart from ordinary people of good will.
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Wherever conversation's flowing, / Why must I feel it falls on me / To keep things going?
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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.
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Sons do not need you. They are always out of your reach, Walking strange waters.
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Say what you will, making marriage work is a woman's business. The institution was invented to do her homage it was contrived for her protection. Unless she accepts it as such --as a beautiful, bountiful, but quite unequal association --the going will be hard indeed.
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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.
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Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.
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Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with one man.
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The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.
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