Phyllis Mcginley, (1905-1978), American Poet, Author Quotes

This is the gist of what I know: Give advice and buy a foe.

To be a housewife is ... A difficult, a wrenching, sometimes ungrateful job if it's looked on as only a job. Regarded as a profession, it is the noblest as it is the most ancient of the catalog. Let none persuade us differently, or the world will be lost indeed.

It's this no-nonsense side of women that is pleasant to deal with. They are the real sportsmen.

I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality, but it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers, and it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age.

Say what you will, making marriage work is a woman's business. The institution was invented to do her homage; it was contrived for her protection. Unless she accepts it as such -- as a beautiful, bountiful, but quite unequal association -- the going will be hard indeed.

Of course we women gossip on occasion. But our appetite for it is not as avid as a man s. It is in the boys gyms, the college fraternity houses, the club locker rooms, and the paneled offices of business that gossip reaches its luxuriant flower.

Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity.

The thing to remember about fathers is, they're men. A girl has to keep it in mind: They are dragon-seekers, bent on improbable rescues. Scratch any father, you find someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, believing change is a threat -- like your first shoes with heels on, like your first bicycle it took such months to get.

Charity withers in the incessant gale.

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