A biography for Phyllis McGinleyhasn’t been written yet.
“In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.”
“A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.”
“Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.”
“Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!”
“Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing, peace is the measure.”
“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.”
“Seventy is wormwood, Seventy is gall But its better to be seventy, Than not alive at all.”
“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.”
“Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with a man, one man.”
“Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.”
“When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.”
“Nothing fails like success; nothing is so defeated as yesterday's triumphant Cause.”
“Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy”
“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.”
“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.”
“Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.”
“Those wearing tolerance for a label call other views intolerable.”
“Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.”