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The Neurotic Circles Ceaselessly Above A Fogged-in Airport.

-Mignon McLaughlin

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The Neurotic Circles Ceaselessly

Mignon McLaughlin

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The Neurotic Circles Ceaselessly Above A Fogged-in Airport.

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The Only Mothers It Is Safe To Forget On Mother's Day Are The Good Ones.

To Talk Easily With People, You Must Firmly Believe That Either You Or They Are Interesting. And Even Then It's Not Easy.

It's Easy Enough To Get Along With A Loved And Loving Child - At Least Till You Try To Get Him To Do Something.

It's Terrifying To See Someone Inside Of Whom A Vital Spring Seems To Have Been Broken. It's Particularly Terrifying To See Him In Your Mirror.

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

Few Women Care What A Man Looks Like, And A Good Thing Too.

The Two Main Hazards Of Psychoanalysis: That It Might Fail, And That If It Succeeds, You'll Never Be Able To Forgive Yourself For All Those Wasted Years.

Others Settle For Small Rewards; The Neurotic Must Always Go For Broke.

Women Usually Love What They Buy, Yet Hate Two-thirds Of What Is In Their Closets.

The Neurotic Believes That Life Has Meaning, But That His Life Hasn't.

Philosophy Teaches A Man That He Can't Take It With Him; Taxes Teach Him He Can't Leave It Behind Either.

If I Knew What I Was So Anxious About, I Wouldn't Be So Anxious.

Nostalgia For What We Have Lost Is More Bearable Than Nostalgia For What We Have Never Had, For The First Involves Knowledge And Pleasure, The Second Only Ignorance And Pain.

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

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

Most Of Us Can Easily Do Two Things At Once; What's All But Impossible Is To Do One Thing At Once.

With Each Passing Year, One Has Less To Say, And Knows Better How To Say It.

The Excesses Of Love Soon Pass, But Its Insufficiencies Torment Us Forever.

The Young Do Not Need God, And The Old Cannot Find Him.

Cash Is The One Gift Everyone Despises And No One Turns Down.

What's For Dinner Is The Only Question Many Husbands Ask Their Wives, And The Only One To Which They Care About The Answer.

There Are Three Iron Links In The Neurotic's Chain: Unloving, Unlovable, Unloved.

Always Live Up To Your Standards — By Lowering Them, If Necessary.

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

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

People Will Disapprove Of You If You're Unhappy, Or If You're Happy In The Wrong Way.

When "why Not Do It?" Barely Outweighs "why Do It?" — Don't Do It.

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

The Next Voice You Hear Will Undoubtedly Be Your Own.

All Love Is Probationary, A Fact Which Frightens Women And Exhilarates Men.

Naturally, The Neurotic Wants You To Love Him Twice As Much, For He's Going To Cut It In Half Anyway.

Neurosis Is No Worse Than A Bad Cold; You Ache All Over, And It's Made You A Mess, But You Won't Die From It.

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

Women Go To Beauty Parlors For The Unmussed Look Men Hate.

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

When Their Children Fail To Charm Others, Few Parents Can Stay Neutral.

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

In The Theater, As In Life, We Prefer A Villain With A Sense Of Humor To A Hero Without One.

Revenge Leads To An Empty Fullness, Like Eating Dirt.

Anywhere You Go Liking Everyone, Everyone Will Be Likeable.

Positive Thinking

There Are Children Born To Be Children, And Others Who Must Mark Time Till They Can Take Their Natural Places As Adults.

The Neurotic Would Like To Trust His Analyst - If Only Because He's Paying Him So Much Money. But He Can't - Because If The Analyst Really Cared, He'd Be Doing It For Nothing.

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.

It Is Always Safe To Tell People That They're Looking Wonderful.

Theatre Audiences Can't Be Made To Think And Cry: At Best, They Can Be Made To Think And Laugh, Or To Feel And Cry.

Men Really Prefer Reasonably Attractive Women; They Go After The Sensational Ones To Impress Other Men.

Nobody Ever Loved Anybody Like Everybody Wants To Be Loved.

Nobody Knows The Trouble We've Seen-but We Keep Trying To Tell Them.

Hate Leaves Ugly Scars, Love Leaves Beautiful Ones.

Luck: When Your Burst Of Energy Doesn't Run Afoul Of Someone Else's.

Your Children Vividly Remember Every Unkind Thing You Ever Did To Them, Plus A Few You Really Didn't.

How Strange That The Young Should Always Think The World Is Against Them - When In Fact That Is The Only Time It Is For Them.

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

Men Feel That Women Somehow Drag Them Down, And Women Feel That Way About Men. It's Possible That Both Are Right.

Funny Relationship

There Are Whole Years For Which I Hope I'll Never Be Cross-examined, For I Could Not Give An Alibi.

I Often Pray, Though I'm Not Really Sure Anyone's Listening; And I Phrase It Carefully, Just In Case He's Literary.

Life Is A Mixed Blessing, Which We Vainly Try To Unmix.

When A Man Falls In Love, He Wants To Go To Bed. When A Woman Falls In Love, She Wants To Talk About It.

Falling In Love

Men Who Don't Like Girls With Brains Don't Like Girls.

I've Been Hiding From God, And I'm Appalled To Find How Easy It Is.

With Men, As With Women, The Main Struggle Is Between Vanity And Comfort; But With Men, Comfort Often Wins.

A Critic Can Only Review The Book He Has Read, Not The One Which The Writer Wrote.

In Youth We Are Plagued By Desire; In Later Years, By The Desire To Feel Desire.

Nymphomaniac: A Woman As Obsessed With Sex As An Average Man.

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

It Took Man Thousands Of Years To Put Words Down On Paper, And His Lawyers Still Wish He Wouldn't.

If You Have To Do It Every Day, For God's Sake Learn To Do It Well.

Men Gossip Less Than Women, But Mean It.

What A Shame That Allowances Have To Stop With The Teens: Both Those That Are Paid To Us And Those That Are Made For Us.

Whatever We Worship, Short Of God, Is Sure To Be Our Undoing.

Neurotics Think Of The Past With Resentment, And The Future With Dread; The Present Just Doesn't Exist.

Don't Be Yourself - Be Someone A Little Nicer.

The Neurotic Usually Obeys His Own Golden Rule: Hate Thy Neighbor As Thyself.

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

Age Is A Slowing Down Of Everything Except Fear.

Beauty Often Fades, But Seldom So Swiftly As The Joy It Gives Us.

Despair Is Anger With No Place To Go.

True Remorse Is Never Just A Regret Over Consequences; It Is A Regret Over Motive.

A Productive Marriage Requires Falling In Enjoy Numerous Occasions, Usually With The Identical Man Or Woman.

Neurotics Are Always Looking For Something New To Overdo.

Those Who Are Brutally Honest Are Seldom So With Themselves.

Brutally Honest

Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse. But They're Sometimes So Bad They Can't Get Better.

The Head Never Rules The Heart, But Just Becomes Its Partner In Crime.

If An Article Is Attractive, Or Useful, Or Inexpensive, They'll Stop Making It Tomorrow; If It's All Three, They Stopped Making It Yesterday.

It Is Important To Our Friends To Believe That We Are Unreservedly Frank With Them, And Important To Friendship That We Are Not.

The Neurotic Always Wishes People Would Let Him Alone - Until They Do.

Love Is Often Gentle, Desire Always A Rage.

In Life, As In Restaurants, We Swallow A Lot Of Indigestible Stuff Just Because It Comes With The Dinner.

Humiliation Is A Vast Country Of Imprecise Boundaries. If You Think You're There, You Are. The Neurotic Rule: When In Doubt, Go Ahead And Feel Humiliated.

A Bore: One Who Knows As Well As You Do What He Is Going To Say Next.

When Threatened, The First Thing A Democracy Gives Up Is Democracy.

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

One Of Life's Few Really Reliable Pleasures: To Have A Family You Love, And To Leave Them For A Week.

We Always Prefer War On Our Own Terms To Peace On Someone Else's.

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

When We Discuss Those We Love With Those Who Do Not Love Them, The End Of Love Is Near.

In Retrospect, Our Triumphs Could As Easily Have Happened To Someone Else; But Our Defeats Are Uniquely Our Own.

Few Novels Or Plays Could Exist Without At Least One Troublemaker In The Group, And Perhaps Life Couldn't Either.

Self-confidence Grows On Trees, In Other People's Orchards.

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

Women Are The Right Age For Just A Few Years; Men, For Most Of Their Lives.

In The Arithmetic Of Love, One Plus One Equals Everything, And Two Minus One Equals Nothing.

If Your Husband Expects You To Laugh, Do So; If He Expects You To Cry, Don't; If You Don't Know What He Expects, What Are You Doing Married?

When Women Feel They Have Learned To Forgive Their Mothers - And Men, Their Fathers - All It Usually Means Is That They've Decided To Allow Themselves The Same Kind Of Behavior.

Happiness Is Like The Penny Candy Of Our Youth: We Got A Lot More For Our Money Back When We Had No Money.

A Hypochondriac Is One Who Has A Pill For Everything Except What Ails Him.

People Are Like Birds: On The Wing, All Beautiful; Up Close, All Beady Little Eyes.

I Know Which Side My Bread Is Buttered On: The Side Which Falls On The Carpet.

If You Hate Your Lot But Wouldn't Trade It, It's Not Your Lot You Hate.

Minor Vices Lead To Major Ones, But Minor Virtues Stay Put.

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

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

The Way The Neurotic Sees It: Bars On His Door Mean That He's Locked In; Bars On Your Door Mean That He's Locked Out.

At Night, Neurotics May Toil Not, But Oh How They Spin!

When First We Fall In Love, We Feel That We Know All There Is To Know About Life, And Perhaps We Are Right.

Falling In Love

When Suffering Comes, We Yearn For Some Sign From God, Forgetting We Have Just Had One.

World Suffering

A Perfect Marriage Is One In Which "i'm Sorry" Is Said Just Often Enough.

Good Food, Good Sex, Good Digestion, Good Sleep: To These Basic Animal Pleasures, Man Has Added Nothing But The Good Cigarette.

I'm Afraid To Win, And Afraid To Lose; I Hate A Draw And Can't Stop Competing; Otherwise I'm Fine.

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

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

If The Pain Wanders, Do Not Waste Your Time With Doctors.

Only Where Children Gather Is There Any Real Chance Of Fun.

Love Requires A Willingness To Die; Marriage, A Willingness To Live.

Most Of Us Would Rather Risk Catastrophe Than Read The Directions.

Says The Rude Child: "no, I Won't Do It." Says The Courteous Grown-up: "yes, I Won't Do It.

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

Desire Creates Havoc When It Is The Only Thing Between Two People, Or When It Is What's Missing.

Neurotics Dream Of A Good Life, Or A Great Suicide Note.

Character Is What Emerges From All The Little Things You Were Too Busy To Do Yesterday, But Did Anyway.

Children Lack Morality, But They Also Lack Fake Morality.

The Past Is Strapped To Our Backs. We Do Not Have To See It; We Can Always Feel It.

Not For Nothing Does The Neurotic Suffer - But Not For Anything Very Much, Either.

The Death Of Someone We Know Always Reminds Us That We Are Still Alive - Perhaps For Some Purpose Which We Ought To Re-examine.

Neurotics Are Anxiety Prone, Accident Prone, And Often Just Prone.

If You Must Reread Old Love Letters, Better Pick A Room Without Mirrors.

Few Of Us Write Great Novels; All Of Us Live Them.

Courage Can't See Around Corners But Goes Around Them Anyway.

The Past Is Rich In Lessons From Which We Would Greatly Profit Except That The Present Is Always So Full Of Special Circumstances.

You Can't Truthfully Explain Your Smallest Action Without Fully Revealing Your Character.

Most Sermons Sound To Me Like Commercials - But I Can't Make Out Whether God Is The Sponsor Or The Product.

The Fear Of Being Laughed At Makes Cowards Of Us All.

I'm Glad I Don't Have To Explain To A Man From Mars Why Each Day I Set Fire To Dozens Of Little Pieces Of Paper, And Then Put Them In My Mouth.

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

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

If Only We Could Be Old And Sick While We're Still Young And Healthy Enough To Put Up With It!

In Any Family, Measles Are Less Contagious Than Bad Habits.

We Welcome Passion, For The Mind Is Briefly Let Off Duty.

We Sometimes Feel That We Have Been Really Understood, But It Was Always Long Ago, By Someone Now Dead.

Every Day Of Our Lives We Are On The Verge Of Making Those Slight Changes That Would Make All The Difference.

We Have To Call It "freedom": Who'd Want To Die For "a Lesser Tyranny"

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

It Upsets Women To Be, Or Not To Be, Stared At Hungrily.

The Three Horrors Of Modern Life - Talk Without Meaning, Desire Without Love, Work Without Satisfaction.

Grasp Your Opportunities, No Matter How Poor Your Health; Nothing Is Worse For Your Health Than Boredom.

Being Neurotic Is Like Shooting Fish In A Barrel, And Missing Them.

In Church, Sacred Music Would Make Believers Of Us All — But Preachers Can Be Counted On To Restore The Balance.

Likely As Not, The Child You Can Do The Least With Will Do The Most To Make You Proud.

If It Came True, It Wasn't Much Of A Dream.

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

Suburb: A Place That Isn't City, Isn't Country, And Isn't Tolerable.

Neurotics Would Like To Sleep All The Time, And To Be Awakened Only When There Is Good News.

The Time To Begin Most Things Is Ten Years Ago.

Procrastination

Every Group Feels Strong Once It Has Found A Scapegoat.

Some Marriages Break Up, And Some Do Not, And In Our World You Can Usually Explain The Former Better Than The Latter.

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

Neurotic: Someone Who Can Go From The Bottom To The Top, And Back Again, Without Ever Once Touching The Middle.

Your Children Tell You Casually Years Later What It Would Have Killed You With Worry To Know At The Time.

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

Even Cowards Can Endure Hardship; Only The Brave Can Endure Suspense.

Learn A Little Of Anything, And You're Ready To Proselytize.

Many Are Saved From Sin By Being So Inept At It.

The Ideal Home: Big Enough For You To Hear The Children, But Not Very Well.

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

What You Have Become Is The Price You Paid To Get What You Used To Want.

Spring, Summer, And Fall Fill Us With Hope; Winter Alone Reminds Us Of The Human Condition.

After The Chills And Fever Of Love, How Nice Is The 98.6 Degrees Of Marriage.

Tough And Funny And A Little Bit Kind: That Is As Near To Perfection As A Human Being Can Be.

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

We All Become Great Explorers During Our First Few Days In A New City, Or A New Love Affair.

It's Wonderful To Watch Pretty Women With Character Grow Beautiful.

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

I Tell You This, And I Tell You Plain: What You Have Done, You Will Do Again; You Will Bite Your Tongue, Careful Or Not, Upon The Already-bitten Spot.

Those Who Turn To God For Comfort May Find Comfort But I Do Not Think They Will Find God.

Don't Look For God Where He Is Needed Most; If You Didn't Bring Him There, He Isn't There.

All Women Are Basically In Competition With Each Other For A Handful Of Eligible Men.

We Wake In The Night, To Stereophonic Silence.

It Must Infuriate Our Children To See Us Always So Much More Forbearing With Everybody Else's.

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

We Are Never More Self-righteous Than When Giving Up What We Should Have Shunned All Along.

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.

No One Really Listens To Anyone Else, And If You Try It For A While You'll See Why.

We Semaphore From Ship To Ship, But They're Sinking, Too.

So Long As God Reveals Himself, Or Doesn't, He Is Behaving Like God.

My Religious Position: I Think That God Could Do A Lot Better, And I'm Willing To Give Him The Chance.

Tragedy Isn't Getting Something, Or Failing To Get It; It's Losing Something You Already Have.

As We Are Human, We Can't Do What We Can't Do; As We're Neurotic, We Can't Do What We Can.

Confession Is Good For The Conscience, But It Usually Bypasses The Soul.

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

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

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