Phyllis McGinley

Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with a man, one man.

Ladies with curly hair. Have time to spare.

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

It is the leisured, I have noticed, who rebel the most at an interruption of routine.

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.

Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.

Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.

Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing, peace is the measure.

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.

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.

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

Suffering is as necessary to entertaining as vermouth is to a Martini - a small but vital ingredient.

Of the small gifts of heaven it seems to me a more than equal share. At birth was given. To girls with curly hair.

Seventy is wormwood, Seventy is gall But its better to be seventy, Than not alive at all.

Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved like a hug from a child.

A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.

A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.

In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an a vocation. It becomes an obsession.

Compromise if not the spice of life is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy.

Of one thing I am certain the body is not the measure of healing peace is the measure.

Nothing fails like success; nothing is so defeated as yesterday's triumphant Cause.

To be a housewife is a difficult a wrenching sometimes an ungrateful job if it is looked on only as a job. Regarded as a profession it is the noblest as it is the most ancient of the catalogue. Let none persuade us differently or the world is lost indeed.

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.