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Make A Habit Of Telling The Truth, Or Make A Habit Of Lying: To Decide Each Case On Its Own Merits Is Exhausting, And Hardly Ever Worth It.

-Mignon McLaughlin

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Make A Habit Of

Mignon McLaughlin

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Make A Habit Of Telling The Truth, Or Make A Habit Of Lying: To Decide Each Case On Its Own Merits Is Exhausting, And Hardly Ever Worth It.

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Telling The Truth

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The Neurotic Circles Ceaselessly Above A Fogged-in Airport.

No One Can Understand Love Who Has Not Experienced Infatuation. And No One Can Understand Infatuation, No Matter How Many Times He Has Experienced It.

A Doctor Recently Described To Me "benign Positional Vertigo": It Means You Get Dizzy In Certain Positions, But You Can Get Over It Without Necessarily Changing The Position. Change "vertigo" To "anxiety," And You've Summed Up The Neurotic's Plight.

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A Parent Who Has Never Apologized To His Children Is A Monster. If He's Always Apologizing, His Children Are Monsters.

We'd All Like A Reputation For Generosity, And We'd All Like To Buy It Cheap.

We Cough Because We Can't Help It, But Others Do It On Purpose.

The Neurotic Longs To Touch Bottom, So At Least He Won't Have That To Worry About Anymore.

The Know-nothings Are, Unfortunately, Seldom The Do-nothings.

A Woman Ought To Look Up To Her Husband, If Only A Half-inch.

Neurotic Quarrels Always Have The Same Theme-song: Hate Me And Get It Over With.

An Old Racetrack Joke Reminds You That Your Program Contains All The Winners' Names. I Stare At My Typewriter Keys With The Same Thought.

Society Honors Its Living Conformists And Its Dead Troublemakers.

The Hardest-learned Lesson: That People Have Only Their Kind Of Love To Give, Not Our Kind.

Don't Ask Others To Forgive In You A Sin They're Dying To Commit Themselves.

There's Something In Every Atheist, Itching To Believe, And Something In Every Believer, Itching To Doubt.

The Trouble With Women Is Men; The Trouble With Men, Men.

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Money: In Its Absence, We Are Coarse; In Its Presence, We Are Vulgar.

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We Work For Praise, And Dawdle Once We Have It.

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We Are Seldom Happy With What We Now Have, But Would Go To Pieces If We Lost Any Part Of It.

If You Jot Down Every Silly Thought That Pops Into Your Mind, You Will Soon Find Out Everything You Most Seriously Believe.

Many Beautiful Women Have Been Made Happy By Their Own Beauty, But No Intelligent Woman Has Ever Been Made Happy By Her Own Intelligence.

Make A Habit Of Telling The Truth, Or Make A Habit Of Lying: To Decide Each Case On Its Own Merits Is Exhausting, And Hardly Ever Worth It.

Telling The Truth

Vanity, Revenge, Loneliness, Boredom, All Apply: Lust Is One Of The Least Of The Reasons For Promiscuity.

A Woman Will Do Anything To Keep A Pretty Figure, But Hardly Anything To Get One.

The Young Are Generally Full Of Revolt, And Are Often Pretty Revolting About It.

The Neurotic Keeps Minute Track Of His Enemies; It Is Only His Friends He Is Careless About.

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How Tired God Must Be Of Guilt And Loneliness, For That Is All We Ever Bring To Him.

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Even In The Same Family, One Child Will Always Instinctively Know When To Ask For Things, And Another Won't.

The Neurotic Thinks Himself Both Hamlet And Claudius, In A World That Belongs To Polonius.

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The Total History Of Almost Anyone Would Shock Almost Everyone.

A Sense Of Humor Is A Major Defense Against Minor Troubles.

Love Looks Forward, Hate Looks Back, Anxiety Has Eyes All Over Its Head.

Mumps, Measles, And Puppy Love Are Terrible After Twenty.

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Hope Is The Feeling We Have That The Feeling We Have Is Not Permanent.

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The Best Work Is Done With The Heart Breaking, Or Overflowing.

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You Will Turn Over Many A Futile New Leaf Till You Learn We Must All Write On Scratched-out Pages.

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Throughout Our Lives, We See In The Mirror The Same Innocent Trusting Face We Have Seen There Since Childhood.

People Find It Hard To Be Both Comic And Serious, Though Life Manages It Easily Enough.

We Lavish On Animals The Love We Are Afraid To Show To People. They Might Not Return It; Or Worse, They Might.

Affairs Are Just As Disillusioning As Marriage, And Much Less Restful.

When You Let Money Speak For You, It Drowns Out Anything Else You Meant To Say.

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Neurotics Always Feel As Though They Were Going Way Up Or Way Down, Which Is Odd In People Going Sideways.

When The Pressures Really Mount, The Neurotic Must Choose: Shall He Have A Good Cry, Or Set Fire To His Neighbor's House?

Every American Child Should Grow Up Knowing A Second Language, Preferably English.

I'm Always There To Tell People That Their Life Is Not That Bad. I Wish It Was Easy To Follow That Advice.

Money Is Much More Exciting Than Anything It Buys.

Every Group Feels Strong Once It Has Found A Scapegoat.

There Are Now Electrical Appliances With The Main Unit So Sealed In That It Cannot Be Got At For Repair. There Have Always Been Human Beings Like That.

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There Are A Handful Of People Whom Money Won't Spoil, And We All Count Ourselves Among Them.

We Can Never At Any Time Absorb More Love Than We're Ready For.

Learning Too Soon Our Limitations, We Never Learn Our Powers.

Without Enthusiasm, Virtue Functions Not At All, And Vice Only Poorly.

Fields Can Lie Fallow But We Can't; We Have Less Time.

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If I Knew Why I Worried So Much, I Wouldn't Worry.

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We're Seldom Drawn To A Character We Admire; Only To A Personality We Like.

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What You Can't Get Out Of, Get Into Wholeheartedly.

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There's Nothing Wrong With Most Men's Egos That The Kowtowing Of A Headwaiter Can't Cure.

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