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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
Life
Side
Ship
Loses
List
Sides
Optimism
Happy
Lists
Funny
Ships
Shows
Sees
May
Horse
Sunny
Always
Lose
Optimist

More quotes by Phyllis McGinley

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To be a housewife is a difficult, a wrenching, sometimes an ungrateful job if it is looked on only as a job. Regarded as a profession, it is the noblest as it is the most ancient of the catalogue. Let none persuade us differently or the world is lost indeed.
Phyllis McGinley
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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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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
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Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.
Phyllis McGinley
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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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In a successful marriage, there is no such thing as one's way. There is only the way of both, only the bumpy, dusty, difficult, but always mutual path.
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Gardening has compensations out of all proportion to its goals. It is creation in the pure sense.
Phyllis McGinley
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Say what you will, making a marriage work is a woman's business.
Phyllis McGinley
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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
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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
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Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same. Gossip is the tool of the poet, the shop-talk of the scientist, and the consolation of the housewife, wit, tycoon and intellectual. It begins in the nursery and ends when speech is past.
Phyllis McGinley
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Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.
Phyllis McGinley
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Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy
Phyllis McGinley
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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.
Phyllis McGinley
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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
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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
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Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.
Phyllis McGinley
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The mass of men live lives of quiet exasperation.
Phyllis McGinley
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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.
Phyllis McGinley
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Tomorrow will come and today will pass, / But the hearts of the young are brittle as glass.
Phyllis McGinley