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Quotes from On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 — Mary McCarthy

1947–1989 United States

← All quotes by Mary McCarthy

22 quotes

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

We are a nation of twenty million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Life for the European is a career; for the American, it is a hazard.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

As subjects, we all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished equation.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

If someone tells you he is going to make "a realistic decision," you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the bother of talk after dinner.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved in a tornado.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

To allude negligently to Kafka, Yeats, Proust, Stendhal, or St. John of the Cross in a tone of of-course-you-know-them is canonical for Mademoiselle contributors, whatever the topic in hand.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

[B]ureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

In violence, we forget who we are.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

[I]n science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

[T]he whole concept of transcendence […] was very close to my heart, the concept that man is more than his circumstances, more even than himself.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around.

On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Mary McCarthy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.