Top 70 Marya Mannes Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.”

— Marya Mannes

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

— Marya Mannes

3. “The right to choose death when life no longer holds meaning is not only the next liberation but the last human right.”

— Marya Mannes

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

— Marya Mannes

5. “When women can cherish the vulnerability of men as much as men can exult in the strength of women, a new breed could lift a ruinous yoke from both.”

— Marya Mannes

6. “It’s never what you say, but how you make it sound sincere.”

— Marya Mannes

7. “Borders are scratched across the hearts of men By strangers with a calm, judicial pen, And when the borders bleed we watch with dread The lines of ink across the map turn red.”

— Marya Mannes

8. “Is there no end to this escalation of desire?”

— Marya Mannes

9. “The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other.”

— Marya Mannes

10. “Self-restraint may be alien to the human temperament, but humanity without restraint will dig its own grave.”

— Marya Mannes

11. “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.”

— Marya Mannes

12. “The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit.”

— Marya Mannes

13. “No man is a Christian who cheats his fellows, perverts the truth, or speaks of a “clean bomb” yet he will be the first to make public his faith in God.”

— Marya Mannes

14. “The world of sight is still limitless. It is the artist who limits vision to the cramped dimensions of his own ego.”

— Marya Mannes

15. “Generosity with strings is not generosity: it is a deal.”

— Marya Mannes

16. “There is nothing harder to come by than detachment and solitude; and nothing more important.”

— Marya Mannes

17. “The greatest miracle of all, the human being.”

— Marya Mannes

18. “Artists never make wars. They are too busy making life out of the matter of their visions.”

— Marya Mannes

19. “The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained...”

— Marya Mannes

20. “The suppression of civil liberties is too many less a matter for horror than the curtailment of the freedom to profit.”

— Marya Mannes

21. “Infants are interesting only to their parents.”

— Marya Mannes

22. “In aid, the proper attitude is one omitting gratitude.”

— Marya Mannes

23. “A high standard of living is usually accompanied by a low standard of thinking.”

— Marya Mannes

24. “Lie down and listen to the crabgrass grow.”

— Marya Mannes

25. “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.”

— Marya Mannes

26. “In the race for money some men may come first, but man comes last.”

— Marya Mannes

27. “Slowly the wasters and despoilers are impoverishing our land, our nature, and our beauty, so that there will not be one beach, one hill, one lane, one meadow, one forest free from the debris of man and the stigma of his improvidence.”

— Marya Mannes

28. “All people talk of money sometimes, everywhere. But not for all people, everywhere, is money the addiction, the obsession, the stimulant, that it seems to be in New York. It is a large part of the clamor, and it is the voice – quite literally – of the man in the street.”

— Marya Mannes

29. “What is asserted by a man is an opinion; what is asserted by a woman is opinionated. A woman with ideas and the ability to express them is something of a social embarrassment, like an unhousebroken pet.”

— Marya Mannes

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

— Marya Mannes

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

— Marya Mannes

32. “To know the good is to react against the bad. Indifference is the mark of deprivation.”

— Marya Mannes

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

— Marya Mannes

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

— Marya Mannes

35. “Know the difference between Giant and Jumbo? Between two-ounce and a big two-ounce? Between a quart and a full quart? What’s a tall 24-inch? What does Extra Long mean? Who’s kidding who?”

— Marya Mannes

36. “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.”

— Marya Mannes

37. “Until we know what motivates the hearts and minds of men we can understand nothing outside ourselves, nor will we ever reach fulfillment as that greatest miracle of all, the human being.”

— Marya Mannes

38. “Hoary idea, in any case, expecting a woman to surrender her name to her husband’s in exchange for his. Why? Would any man submerge his identity and heritage to the woman he wed?”

— Marya Mannes

39. “You cannot throw words like heroism and sacrifice and nobility and honor away without abandoning the qualities they express.”

— Marya Mannes

40. “Advertisers in general bear a large part of the responsibility for the deep feelings of inadequacy that drive women to psychiatrists, pills, or the bottle.”

— Marya Mannes

41. “You cannot know what you do not feel.”

— Marya Mannes

42. “An American who can make money, invoke God, and be no better than his neighbor, has nothing to fear but truth itself.”

— Marya Mannes

43. “A man at his desk in a room with a closed door is a man at work. A woman at a desk in any room is available.”

— Marya Mannes

44. “The New York voice reflects its diversity, its foreignness, and, inevitably, the sense of superiority New Yorkers feel or come to feel. It says, without saying, We Know.”

— Marya Mannes

45. “In an age where the lowered eyelid is just a sign of fatigue, the delicate game of love is pining away. Freud and flirtation are poor companions.”

— Marya Mannes

46. “The faucet leak, and learn to leave them so.”

— Marya Mannes

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

— Marya Mannes

48. “Human progress had so often been checked by those who were afraid of losing what they had.”

— Marya Mannes

49. “I don’t think it’s possible to write a good play or paint a good picture and be a good Republican.”

— Marya Mannes

50. “You mix the affluence of the white and the poverty of the black and you do not get a civilized society. Integration on an equal level is one thing. Mixing on an unequal level is another.”

— Marya Mannes