Mary McCarthy - Life Quotes

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Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist.

Mary McCarthy

It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief.

Mary McCarthy

On the wall of our life together hung a gun waiting to be fired in the final act.

Mary McCarthy

The relation between life and literature — a final antimony — is one of mutual plagiarism.

Mary McCarthy

Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard.

Mary McCarthy

The labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process.

Mary McCarthy

Friendship... is essential to intellectuals. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.

Mary McCarthy

The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable.

Mary McCarthy

My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.

Mary McCarthy