Explore Quotes by Marya Mannes

By the age of fifty, you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth.

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

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

Lie down and listen to the crabgrass grow The faucet leak, and learn to leave them so.

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

Art can excite, titillate, please, entertain, and sometimes shock; but its ultimate function is to ennoble.

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 greatest miracle of all, the human being.

For every five well-adjusted and smoothly functioning Americans, there are two who never had the chance to discover themselves. It may well be because they have never been alone with themselves.

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

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

In aid, the proper attitude is one omitting gratitude

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive.

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.

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