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

-Mignon McLaughlin

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Your Children Tell You

Mignon McLaughlin

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be Glad That You're Greedy; The National Economy Would Collapse If You Weren't.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The Marriage Of Convenience Has This To Recommend It: We Are Better Judges Of Convenience Than We Are Of Love.

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

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

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

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

Money Is Much More Exciting Than Anything It Buys.

Few Of Us Could Bear To Have Ourselves For Neighbors.

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

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

A Husband Only Worries About A Particular Other Man; A Wife Distrusts Her Whole Species.

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

A Woman Telling Her True Age Is Like A Buyer Confiding His Final Price To An Armenian Rug Dealer.

A Woman's Mink Coat Represents The Sacrifice Of A Lot Of Little Animals, Including Her Husband.

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

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

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'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.

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

Hot Dogs Always Seem Better Out Than At Home; So Do French-fried Potatoes; So Do Your Children.

The Neurotic Listens To Weather Reports About Small Craft Warnings, And He Thinks: They're Talking About Me.

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

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

Albert Einstein When Asked What He Considered To Be The Most Powerful Force In The Universe Answered: Compound Interest!

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

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.

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

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

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

The Soul May Sleep And The Body Still Be Happy, But Only In Youth.

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

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.

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

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

Anything You Lose Automatically Doubles In Value.

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

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.

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

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

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

Whenever We Safely Land In A Plane, We Promise God A Little Something.

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

Around The Corner

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

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

Love Is Often Gentle, Desire Always A Rage.

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

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

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

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

The Poor Have The Same Basic Pleasures As The Rich, And The Rich Will Always Resent It.

If You're A Gifted Flirt, Talking About The Price Of Eggs Will Do As Well As Any Other Subject.

If You Can Tell Anyone About It, It's Not The Worst Thing You Ever Did.

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.

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?

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

Love Is The Silent Saying And Saying Of A Single Name.

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

Forget About Calories - Everything Makes Thin People Thinner, And Fat People Fatter.

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

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

We Are Like People With Short-term Leases On Summer Cottages; We Can Never Seem To Make Our Provisions Come Out Even With Our Stay.

We Come Late, If At All, To Wine And Philosophy: Whiskey And Action Are Easier.

Others Follow Patterns; We Alone Are Unpredictable.

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

World Suffering

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.

The Neurotic Has Perfect Vision In One Eye, But He Cannot Remember Which.

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

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

Family Quarrels Have A Total Bitterness Unmatched By Others. Yet It Sometimes Happens That They Also Have A Kind Of Tang, A Pleasantness Beneath The Unpleasantness, Based On The Tacit Understanding That This Is Not For Keeps; That Any Limb You Climb Out On Will Still Be There Later For You To Climb Back.

I Wish I'd Said It First, And I Don't Even Know Who Did: The Only Problems That Money Can Solve Are Money Problems.

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

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

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.

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

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

God And The Devil Lose To A Common Enemy: Inertia.

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

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

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.

A Successful Marriage Requires Falling In Love Many Times, Always With The Same Person.

Spiritual Sloth, Or Acedia, Was Known As The Sin Of The Middle Ages. It's The Sin Of My Middle Age, Too.

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

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.

Women Polish The Silver And Water The Plants And Wait To Be Really Needed.

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

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

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

Creative Work Is One Of Life's Greatest Pleasures, And The Only One We Will Gladly Interrupt.

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

Most Of Us Become Parents Long Before We Have Stopped Being Children.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Failure Can Get To Be A Rather Comfortable Old Friend.

Elegimos Aquellos Que Nos Gusta, Con Los Que Amamos, No Tenemos Voz En El Asunto.

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

Good-looking Girls Break Hearts, And Goodhearted Girls Mend Them.

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

Anywhere You Go Liking Everyone, Everyone Will Be Likeable.

Positive Thinking

Whether Or Not You Love Television, You've Got To Admit That It Certainly Loves Itself.

Children Lack Morality, But They Also Lack Fake Morality.

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

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

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

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

The Neurotic Circles Ceaselessly Above A Fogged-in Airport.

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

Women Are Afraid Of Mice And Of Murder, And Of Very Little In Between.

We Can Never Understand Other People's Motives, Nor Their Furniture.

Anything You Do From The Heart Enriches You, But Sometimes Not Till Years Later.

Our Strength Is Often Composed Of The Weakness That We're Damned If We're Going To Show.

Altruism Is A Hard Master, But So Is Opportunism.

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

Healthy Parakeets Have The Nervous Energy Of Tennis Players.

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

A New Wound Makes All The Old Ones Ache Again.

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

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

It's Hard To Feel Middle-aged, Because How Can You Tell How Long You Are Going To Live?

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

Men Never Know How Tired They Are Till Their Wives Sit Them Down For A Nice Long Talk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neurotics Are Always Looking For Something New To Overdo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

They Threaten Me With Lung Cancer, And Still I Smoke And Smoke. If They'd Only Threaten Me With Hard Work, I Might Stop.

God Is Less Careful Than General Motors, For He Floods The World With Factory Rejects.

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

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

No Good Neurotic Finds It Difficult To Be Both Opinionated And Indecisive.

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

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

Too Much Money Is As Demoralizing As Too Little, And There's No Such Thing As Exactly Enough.

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

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

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

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

The Plague Of Government Is Senile Delinquency.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Hate Leaves Ugly Scars, Love Leaves Beautiful Ones.

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

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

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

Neurotics Have Plenty Of Non-neurotic Friends, But Not For Long.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Surrounded By People Who Love Life, You Love It Too; Surrounded By People Who Don't, You Don't.

Every Creature Stalks Some Other, Catches It, And Is Caught.

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