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Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but passé. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.

— Phyllis McGinley

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Notes from Wikiquote

Revised, and retitled "In Defense of Sin", in The Province of the Heart (1959), p. 35

More quotes by Phyllis McGinley

Men may be allowed romanticism; women, who can create life in their own bodies, dare not indulge in it.

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul.

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

Meek-eyed parents hasten down the ramps
To greet their offspring, terrible from camps.

A mother's hardest to forgive.
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you
Ripe on a plate. And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Phyllis McGinley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.