Marya Mannes Quotes

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.

All great lovers are articulate, and verbal seduction is the surest road to actual seduction.

Euthanasia ... is simply to be able to die with dignity at a moment when life is devoid of it.

People on horses look better than they are. People in cars look worse than they are.

The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other.

The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained. By the age of fifty you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth.

In our society those who are in reality superior in intelligence can be accepted by their fellows only if they pretend they are not.

The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason.

The barbarian weapon is fission: the splitting asunder. It has been perfected for death. Our only weapon is fusion: an imperfect process still, though designed for life.

Money is not an aphrodisiac: the desire it may kindle in the female eye is more for the cash than the carrier.

The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality.

Borders are scratched across the hearts of men By strangers with a calm, judicial pen, And when the borders bleed we watch with dread The lines of ink across the map turn red.

It's never what you say, but how you make it sound sincere.

If American men are obsessed with money, American women are obsessed with weight. The men talk of gain, the women talk of loss, and I do not know which talk is the more boring.

Ribbons a-flutter and orchids a-tremble, Yearly the vigilant Daughters assemble, Affirming in fervid and firm resolutions Their permanent veto on all revolutions.

Timing and arrogance are decisive factors in the successful use of talent.

We pity or condemn the communist peoples of the world for being bound in the chains of doctrine. So are we. Our doctrine runs as follows: Our Way is the Only Way.

It is privilege of living to be acutely, agonizingly conscious of the moment that is always present and always passing.

Women are repeatedly accused of taking things personally. I cannot see any other honest way of taking them.

Generosity with strings is not generosity: it is a deal.

It is not enough to show people how to live better; there is a mandate for any group with enormous powers of communication to show people how to be better.

You cannot know what you do not feel.

To know the good is to react against the bad. Indifference is the mark of deprivation.

Is there no end to this escalation of desire?

Surely the hold of great music on the listener is precisely this: that the listener is made whole; and at the same time part of an image of infinite grace and grandeur which is creation.

Flirtation is merely an expression of considered desire coupled with an admission of its impracticability.

Good-fellowship, unflagging, is the prime requisite for success in our society, and the man or woman who smiles only for reasons of humor or pleasure is a deviate.

I don't think the advertisers have any real idea of their power not only to reflect but to mould society.

Advertisers in general bear a large part of the responsibility for the deep feelings of inadequacy that drive women to psychiatrists, pills, or the bottle.

The faucet leak, and learn to leave them so.

One is as one is, and the love that can't encompass both is a poor sort of love.

You mix the affluence of the white and the poverty of the black and you do not get a civilized society. Integration on an equal level is one thing. Mixing on an unequal level is another.

Lie down and listen to the crabgrass grow.

Self-restraint may be alien to the human temperament, but humanity without restraint will dig its own grave.

The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained.

You cannot throw words like heroism and sacrifice and nobility and honor away without abandoning the qualities they express.

No man is a Christian who cheats his fellows, perverts the truth, or speaks of a "clean bomb" yet he will be the first to make public his faith in God.

Hoary idea, in any case, expecting a woman to surrender her name to her husband's in exchange for his. Why? Would any man submerge his identity and heritage to the woman he wed?

When women can cherish the vulnerability of men as much as men can exult in the strength of women, a new breed could lift a ruinous yoke from both.

To be at peace with self, to find company and nourishment in self-this would be the test of the free and productive psyche.

The world of sight is still limitless. It is the artist who limits vision to the cramped dimensions of his own ego.

Promiscuous ... was a word I had never applied to myself. Possibly no one ever does, for it is a sordid word, reducing many valuable moments to nothing more than doglike copulation.

Minds are cluttered from the age of six with the values of others-values which bear little relation to their own private capacities, needs and desires.

Artists never make wars. They are too busy making life out of the matter of their visions.

the car, by bisecting the human outline, diminishes it, producing a race of half-people in a motion not of their own making

Revelation is the marriage of knowing and feeling.

In an age where the lowered eyelid is just a sign of fatigue, the delicate game of love is pining away. Freud and flirtation are poor companions.

The Republicans think they have a corner on morality.

Republicans seems to me to be chiefly concerned with holding on to what they have: in society, it's position, or respectability, or what you will; in business, of course, it's profit.

I don't think it's possible to write a good play or paint a good picture and be a good Republican.