Phyllis McGinley

Phyllis McGinley (March 21, 1905 – February 22, 1978) was an American author of children's books and poetry. Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

Quotes

  •    Meek-eyed parents hasten down the ramps
    To greet their offspring, terrible from camps.
  • 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.
    • "Lament for a Wavering Viewpoint", Pocketful of Wry (1940), pp. 89–90
  • Compromise? Of course we compromise. But compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy and Spruce Manor the pleasant place it is.
Ah! some love Paris,
And some, Purdue.
But love is an archer with a low I.Q.
A bold, bad bowman, and innocent of pity.
So I'm in love with
New York City.
  • Ah! some love Paris,
    And some, Purdue.
    But love is an archer with a low I.Q.
    A bold, bad bowman, and innocent of pity.
    So I'm in love with
    New York City.
    • "A Kind of a Valentine", st. 9, in The New York Times Magazine (1 February 1953), sec. 6, pt. 2, p. 19 [1]
    • Collected, and retitled "A Kind of a Love Letter to New York", in Love Letters (1954), p. 116
  • Always on Monday morning the Press reports
       God as revealed to His vicars in various guises—
    Benevolent, stormy, patient, or out of sorts.
       But only God knows which God God recognizes.
    • "The Day After Sunday", st. 3, in Eternity, vol. 4, no. 3 (March 1953), p. 6
    • Collected in Love Letters (1954), p. 68
  • Prince, I warn you, under the rose,
       Time is the thief you cannot banish.
    These are my daughters, I suppose.
       But where in the world did the children vanish?
    • "Ballade of Lost Objects", envoi, Love Letters (1954), p. 18
  • The other day I chanced to meet
    An angry man upon the street—
    A man of wrath, a man of war,
    A man who truculently bore
    Over his shoulder, like a lance,
    A banner labeled "Tolerance."
    • "The Angry Man", st. 1, Love Letters (1954), p. 114
  • 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 passé. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.
    • "Unchastity Is a Sin", in Catholic Digest (October 1954), p. 39 [2]
    • Revised, and retitled "In Defense of Sin", in The Province of the Heart (1959), p. 35
  • Gossip isn’t scandal and it’s not merely malicious. It’s chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.
  • I’ll read as I please—a spot of science fiction, a taste of Jane Austen. Mark Twain and Keats and Agatha Christie shall sit cheek by jowl on my night table. And I’ll make it a point of honor to finish no book I’m not enjoying, also to skip as much and as often as I like. If I want to peek to see how a novel comes out, I’ll feel perfectly justified. I’ll go to Plato when I’m in the mood and the newest thriller when I’m not. For again, the little vices bring relaxation; and a bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides that necessary roughage in the literary diet.
    • "New Year & No Resolutions", Merry Christmas, Happy New Year (1958), p. 47
  • Men may be allowed romanticism; women, who can create life in their own bodies, dare not indulge in it.
  • God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul.
  • A mother's hardest to forgive.
    Life is the fruit she longs to hand you
    Ripe on a plate. And while you live,
    Relentlessly she understands you.
  • The kitchen will not come into its own again until it ceases to be a status symbol and becomes again a workshop. It may be pastel. It may be ginghamed as to curtains and shining with copper like a picture in a woman's magazine. But you and I will know it chiefly by its fragrances and its clutter. At the back of the stove will sit a soup kettle, gently bubbling, one into which every day are popped leftover bones and vegetables to make stock for sauces or soup for the family. Carrots and leeks will sprawl on counters, greens in a basket. There will be something sweet-smelling twirling in a bowl and something savory baking in the oven. Cabinet doors will gape ajar and colored surfaces are likely to be littered with salt and pepper and flour and herbs and cheesecloth and pot holders and long-handled forks. It won't be neat. It won't even look efficient. but when you enter it you will feel the pulse of life throbbing from every corner. The heart of the home will have begun once again to beat.
    • "Kitchens Are for Cooking", in Ladies' Home Journal (September 1964), p. 41 [3]
    • Collected in Sixpence in Her Shoe (1964), p. 156
  • Housewives more than any other race deserve well-furnished minds. They have to live in them such a lot of the time. ... We who belong to that profession hold the fate of the world in our hands.
  • Wifehood, the house, a family; they are woman’s traditional concern and each in its way represents one of the other great three—faith, hope, charity—which St. Paul sets down as the virtues of earth. (For how can one rear a family without faith? Or build a roof without hope? Or remain a proper wife without charity?) They are life’s vital elements and no ordered world can endure without them.
    • "The Last Word", Sixpence in Her Shoe (1964), p. 255
  • Jean Holzhauer, "Poet with Point", in Today: National Catholic Magazine, vol. 12, no. 2 (November 1956), pp. 3–6
This article is issued from Wikiquote. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.