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

-Mignon McLaughlin

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We All Become Great

Mignon McLaughlin

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

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More From Mignon McLaughlin

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

There Are So Many Things That We Wish We Had Done Yesterday, So Few That We Feel Like Doing Today.

Procrastination

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

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

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?

Life Marks Us All Down, So It's Just As Well That We Start Out By Overpricing Ourselves.

We Are All Such A Waste Of Our Potential, Like Three-way Lamps Using One-way Bulbs.

Pity All Newlyweds. She Cooks Something Nice For Him, And He Brings Her Flowers, And They Kiss And Think: How Easy Marriage Is.

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

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

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

It's Innocence When It Charms Us, Ignorance When It Doesn't.

Purity And Innocence

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

Spite Is Never Lonely; Envy Always Tags Along.

We Choose Those We Like; With Those We Love, We Have No Say In The Matter.

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

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

Women Gather Together To Wear Silly Hats, Eat Dainty Food, And Forget How Unresponsive Their Husbands Are. Men Gather To Talk Sports, Eat Heavy Food, And Forget How Demanding Their Wives Are. Only Where Children Gather Is There Any Real Chance Of Fun.

Every Now And Then You Run Across Radiantly Attractive People And You're Delighted To Find They Adore You, Till You Realize That They Adore Just About Everybody - And That's What's Made Them Radiantly Attractive.

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.

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

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

When Hope Is Hungry, Everything Feeds It

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

The Neurotic Doesn't Know How To Cope With His Emotional Bills; Some He Keeps Paying Over And Over, Others He Never Pays At All.

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

Men Gossip Less Than Women, But Mean It.

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

Your Money, Or Your Life. We Know What To Do When A Burglar Makes This Demand Of Us, But Not When God Does.

When The Pain Is Great Enough, We Will Let Anyone Be Doctor.

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

It's Impossible To Be Loyal To Your Family, Your Friends, Your Country, And Your Principles, All At The Same Time.

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

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

Anywhere You Go Liking Everyone, Everyone Will Be Likeable.

Positive Thinking

Desire Is In Men A Hunger, In Women Only An Appetite.

The Neurotic Lies Awake At Night, Composing Letters To Those He Hates. He Seldom Thinks Of Dropping A Line To Those He Loves.

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

God Doesn't Measure His Bounty, But Oh How We Do!

One Day You Are An Apprentice, And Everybody's Pet; The Next, You Are Coldly Expected To Deliver. There Is Never Sufficient Warning That The Second Day Is Coming.

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

We Catch Frightful Glimpses Of Ourselves In The Hostile Eyes Of Others.

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

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

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

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

Courage Doesn't Know What's Around The Corner, But Goes Around It Anyway.

Around The Corner

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

We Are Irritated By Rascals, Intolerant Of Fools, And Prepared To Love The Rest. But Where Are They?

At The Beginning Of A Love Affair, Not Even The Neurotic Is Neurotic.

The Time To Begin Most Things Is Ten Years Ago.

Procrastination

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

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

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

Men Prefer Brief Praise, Pitched High; Women Are Satisfied With Praise In A Lower Key, Just So It Goes On And On.

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

We Are All Born Brave, Trusting And Greedy, And Most Of Us Remain Greedy.

There Are Always A Few People You Do A Lot For, And A Few Who Do A Lot For You, But They're Not The Same People.

If The Second Marriage Really Succeeds, The First One Didn't Really Fail.

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.

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

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

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

Money Is Much More Exciting Than Anything It Buys.

Altruism Is A Hard Master, But So Is Opportunism.

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

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

Women Flirt To Keep Their Stock High, Men To Get Somewhere.

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

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

Many Things Can Make You Miserable For Weeks; Few Can Bring You A Whole Day Of Happiness.

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

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.

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

Goods Are Displayed By Thousands Of Shopkeepers With A Sense Of Beauty That Finds No Other Outlet.

It Does Not Undo Harm To Acknowledge That We Have Done It; But It Undoes Us Not To Acknowledge It.

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

Flesh Goes On Pleasuring Us, And Humiliating Us, Right To The End.

What We Forgive Too Freely Doesn't Stay Forgiven.

Power Of Forgiveness

Women Are Good Listeners, But It's A Waste Of Time Telling Your Troubles To A Man Unless There's Something Specific You Want Him To Do.

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

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

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

It's Awesome To Realize That If Your Greatest Potential Talent Is For Riding A Bicycle Upside Down On A High Wire, You Will Somehow Discover It.

Once You Become Self-conscious, There Is No End To It; Once You Start To Doubt, There Is No Room For Anything Else.

Love Is Often Gentle, Desire Always A Rage.

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

The First Two Days Of A Vacation Are Endless; Then It Flies.

A New Wound Makes All The Old Ones Ache Again.

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

We Are Keenly Aware Of The Faults Of Our Friends, But If They Like Us Enough It Doesn't Matter.

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

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

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.

Despair Is Anger With No Place To Go.

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

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

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

The Woman Just Ahead Of You At The Supermarket Checkout Has All The Delectable Groceries You Didn't Even Know They Carried.

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

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

Others Follow Patterns; We Alone Are Unpredictable.

Of All Second-class Citizens, Neurotics Are The Only Ones Who Are So By Choice.

Loneliness, Insomnia, And Change: The Fear Of These Is Even Worse Than The Reality.

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

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

If You Are Brave Too Often, People Will Come To Expect It Of You.

The Only Courage That Matters Is The Kind That Gets You From One Moment To The Next.

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

We Waste A Lot Of Time Running After People We Could Have Caught By Just Standing Still.

There Is Always Some Specific Moment When We Become Aware That Our Youth Is Gone; But, Years After, We Know It Was Much Later.

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

The Neurotic Is Always Half-drowning In Anxiety, And Always Being Half-rescued.

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

No Matter How Many Christmas Presents You Give Your Child, There's Always That Terrible Moment When He's Opened The Very Last One. That's When He Expects You To Say, 'oh Yes, I Almost Forgot,' And Take Him Out And Show Him The Pony.

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.

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

Youth Is Not Enough. And Love Is Not Enough. And Success Is Not Enough. And, If We Could Achieve It, Enough Would Not Be Enough.

Congratulations

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

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

Pull Yourself Together' Is Seldom Said To Anyone Who Can.

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 First-rate Mind Is Always Curious, Compassionate, Original, And Pessimistic.

Women Are Never Landlocked: They're Always Mere Minutes Away From The Briny Deep Of Tears.

The Neurotic Feels As Though Trapped In A Gas-filled Room Where At Any Moment Someone, Probably Himself, Will Strike A Match.

Many Who Would Not Take The Last Cookie Would Take The Last Lifeboat.

The Total History Of Almost Anyone Would Shock Almost Everyone.

Puritans Will Never Believe It, But Life Is Full Of Disagreeable Things That Aren't Even Good For You.

Women Who Feel Naked Without Their Lipstick Are Well Over Thirty.

Comfort, Or Revelation: God Owes Us One Of These, But Surely Not Both.

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

The Neurotic's Strongest Fantasy Is That He Has No Fantasies. The Real Is Very Real To Him, The Unreal Even More So.

No Matter How Brilliantly An Idea Is Stated, We Will Not Really Be Moved Unless We Have Already Half Thought Of It Ourselves.

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

No One Ever Loved Anyone The Way That Person Wanted To Be Loved.

Wanted To Be Loved

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

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

Many Marriages Are Simply Working Partnerships Between Businessmen And Housekeepers.

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

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

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

Neurotics Expect You To Remember All The Things That They Tell You, And Many That They Don't.

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

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.

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

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

The Neurotic Circles Ceaselessly Above A Fogged-in Airport.

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

Many Of Us Are Equal To Life's Emergencies Who Cannot Bear Its Day-after-dayness.

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

Nobody Ever Loved Anybody Like Everybody Wants To Be Loved.

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

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

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

Everybody Can Write; Writers Can't Do Anything Else.

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.

Society Honors Its Living Conformists And Its Dead Troublemakers.

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

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

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

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

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

A First-rate Marriage Is Like A First-rate Hotel: Expensive, But Worth It.

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

Some Women Love Only What They Can Hold In Their Arms; Others, Only What They Can't.

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

What We Love About Love Is The Fever, Which Marriage Puts To Bed And Cures.

My Thoughts, I Guess, Are Bitter; Who But The Bitter Have Thoughts?

There's An Awful Lot Of Blood Around That Water Is Thicker Than.

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

Hate Leaves Ugly Scars, Love Leaves Beautiful Ones.

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.

A Good Executive Is One Who Makes People Contentedly Settle For Less Than They Meant To Get, In Return For More Than They Meant To Give.

Boredom Is Often The Cause Of Promiscuity, And Always Its Result.

We Often Pray To Be Better, When In Truth We Only Want To Feel Better.

There's Only One Person Who Needs A Glass Of Water Oftener Than A Small Child Tucked In For The Night, And That's A Writer Sitting Down To Write.

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

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

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

Those Who Are Brutally Honest Are Seldom So With Themselves.

Brutally Honest

It's The Most Unhappy People Who Most Fear Change.

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

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

The Proud Man Can Learn Humility, But He Will Be Proud Of It.

If Your Children Spend Most Of Their Time In Other People's Houses, You're Lucky; If They All Congregate At Your House, You're Blessed.

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

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

No Woman Wants To See Herself Too Clearly.

If You Made A List Of Reasons Why Any Couple Got Married, And Another List Of The Reasons For Their Divorce, You'd Have A Hell Of A Lot Of Overlapping.

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

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

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

World Suffering

An Artist Usually Has No Friends Except Other Artists, And Usually They Do Not Like His Work.

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.

Healthy Parakeets Have The Nervous Energy Of Tennis Players.

Neurotics Are Sure That No One Understands Them, And They Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way.

Neurotics Make Poor Patriots; If You're Ashamed Of Something As Big As Yourself, It's Hard To Be Proud Of Something As Small As Your Country.

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

How Can A Man Marry Wisely In His Twenties? The Girl He's Going To Wind Up Wanting Hasn't Even Been Born.

A Woman Asks Little Of Love: Only That She Be Able To Feel Like A Heroine.

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