Phyllis McGinley Quotes

90 Sourced Quotes

Please to put a nickel,
Please to put a dime.
How petitions trickle
In at Christmas time!

Phyllis McGinley
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
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
Sticks and stones are hard on bones.
Aimed with angry art,
Words can sting like anything.
But silence breaks the heart.

Phyllis McGinley
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.

Phyllis McGinley
Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.

Phyllis McGinley
Scratch any father, you find
Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors,
Believing change is a threat.

Phyllis McGinley
For the hearts of nurses are solid gold,
But their heels are flat and their hands are cold,
And their voices lilt with a lilt that's falser
Than the smile of an exhibition waltzer.
Yes, nurses can cure you, nurses restore you,
But nurses are bound that they do things for you.

Phyllis McGinley
One applauds the industry of professional philanthropy. But it has its dangers. After a while the private heart begins to harden. We fling letters into the wastebasket, are abrupt to telephoned solicitations. Charity withers in the incessant gale.

Phyllis McGinley
Gardening has compensations out of all proportion to its goals. It is creation in the pure sense.

Phyllis McGinley
The human animal needs a freedom seldom mentioned, freedom from intrusion. He needs a little privacy quite as much as he wants understanding or vitamins or exercise or praise.

Phyllis McGinley
The more I see
Of the Pekinee,
The more I am fond of people.

Phyllis McGinley
Meanness inherits a set of silverware and keeps it in the bank. Economy uses it only on important occasions, for fear of loss. Thrift sets the table with it every night for pure pleasure, but counts the butter spreaders before they are put away.

Phyllis McGinley
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
Mere wealth, I am above it,
It is the reputation wide,
The playwright's pomp, the poet's pride
That eagerly I covet.

Phyllis McGinley
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
Always on Monday morning the press reports God as revealed to His vicars in various guises — Benevolent, stormy, patient, or out of sorts. God knows which God is the God God recognizes.

Phyllis McGinley
Happiness puts on as many shapes as discontent, and there is nothing odder than the satisfactions of one's neighbor.

Phyllis McGinley
I'm a middle-bracket person with a middle-bracket spouse
And we live together gaily in a middle-bracket house.
We've a fair-to-middlin' family; we take the middle view;
So we're manna sent from heaven to internal revenue.

Phyllis McGinley
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!

Phyllis McGinley
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
A successful party is a creative act, and creation is always painful.

Phyllis McGinley
Sons do not need you.
They're always out of your reach;
Walking strange waters.

Phyllis McGinley
Wherever conversation's flowing,
Why must I feel it falls on me
To keep things going?

Phyllis McGinley
Women like other women fine. The more feminine she is, the more comfortable a woman feels with her own sex. It is only the occasional and therefore noticeable adventuress who refuses to make friends with us.

Phyllis McGinley