Quotes by Phyllis Mcginley

Phyllis Mcginley

American poet and author

Lived from: 1905 - 1978

Category: Writers (Contemporary) | Poets (Contemporary) Country: FlagUnited States

  • Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.
  • 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.

Quotes 1 till 16 of 16.

  • A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can't fold a paper in a crowded train.
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  • Frigidity is largely nonsense. It is this generation's catchword, one only vaguely understood and constantly misused. Frigid women are few. There is a host of diffident and slow-ripening ones.
    ― 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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  • I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age.
    ― 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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  • Of course we women gossip on occasion. But our appetite for it is not as avid as a man s. It is in the boys gyms, the college fraternity houses, the club locker rooms, the paneled offices of business that gossip reaches its luxuriant flower.
    ― Phyllis Mcginley
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  • Oh, high is the price of parenthood, and daughters may cost you double. You dare not forget, as you thought you could, that youth is a plague and a trouble.
    ― Phyllis Mcginley
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  • Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.
    ― Phyllis Mcginley
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  • Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!
    ― Phyllis Mcginley
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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.
    ― Phyllis Mcginley
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  • 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.
    ― Phyllis Mcginley
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  • Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.
    ― Phyllis Mcginley
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  • Sticks and stones are hard on bones aimed with angry art. Words can sting like anything but silence breaks the heart.
    ― Phyllis Mcginley
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  • The Enemy, who wears her mother's usual face and confidential tone, has access; doubtless stares into her writing case and listens on the phone.
    ― Phyllis Mcginley
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  • The knowingness of little girls hidden underneath their curls.
    ― Phyllis Mcginley
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  • Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.
    ― Phyllis Mcginley
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Questions and Answers

What are the most famous quotes from Phyllis Mcginley?

The two most famous quotes from Phyllis Mcginley are:

  • "A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can't fold a paper in a crowded train."
  • "Frigidity is largely nonsense. It is this generation's catchword, one only vaguely understood and constantly misused. Frigid women are few. There is a host of diffident and slow-ripening ones."

When did Phyllis Mcginley live?

Phyllis Mcginley was born in 1905 and died in the year 1978.