Phyllis McGinley

A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can't fold a paper in a crowded train.

When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.

Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.

Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!

Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.

Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with a man, one man.

Those wearing tolerance for a label call other views intolerable.

Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.

Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.

Nothing fails like success; nothing is so defeated as yesterday's triumphant Cause.

Seventy is wormwood, Seventy is gall But its better to be seventy, Than not alive at all.

A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.

In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.

Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.

Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing, peace is the measure.