Top 350 Mignon McLaughlin Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “We have to call it “freedom”: who’d want to die for “a lesser tyranny””

— Mignon McLaughlin

202. “If there is something you must do and you cannot do it, you cannot do anything else.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

203. “Men really prefer reasonably attractive women; they go after the sensational ones to impress other men.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

204. “They threaten me with lung cancer, and still I smoke and smoke. If they’d only threaten me with hard work, I might stop.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

205. “The plague of government is senile delinquency.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

206. “To talk easily with people, you must firmly believe that either you or they are interesting. And even then it’s not easy.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

207. “It upsets women to be, or not to be, stared at hungrily.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

208. “If only we could be old and sick while we’re still young and healthy enough to put up with it!”

— Mignon McLaughlin

209. “We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

210. “When you let money speak for you, it drowns out anything else you meant to say.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

211. “We can never understand other people’s motives, nor their furniture.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

212. “Make a habit of telling the truth, or make a habit of lying: to decide each case on its own merits is exhausting, and hardly ever worth it.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

213. “In youth we are plagued by desire; in later years, by the desire to feel desire.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

214. “If your husband expects you to laugh, do so; if he expects you to cry, don’t; if you don’t know what he expects, what are you doing married?”

— Mignon McLaughlin

215. “Women polish the silver and water the plants and wait to be really needed.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

216. “So long as God reveals Himself, or doesn’t, He is behaving like God.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

217. “The neurotic is always half-drowning in anxiety, and always being half-rescued.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

218. “Women go to beauty parlors for the unmussed look men hate.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

219. “All women are basically in competition with each other for a handful of eligible men.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

220. “At night, neurotics may toil not, but oh how they spin!”

— Mignon McLaughlin

221. “It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

222. “We can never at any time absorb more love than we’re ready for.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

223. “Many are saved from sin by being so inept at it.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

224. “If you can tell anyone about it, it’s not the worst thing you ever did.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

225. “After he has had his tantrum, the neurotic expects those around him to feel friendly and relaxed; after all, he does.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

226. “People will disapprove of you if you’re unhappy, or if you’re happy in The Wrong Way.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

227. “Neurotics always feel as though they were going way up or way down, which is odd in people going sideways.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

228. “The know-nothings are, unfortunately, seldom the do-nothings.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

229. “Women flirt to keep their stock high, men to get somewhere.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

230. “The neurotic doesn’t know how to cope with his emotional bills; some he keeps paying over and over, others he never pays at all.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

231. “There’s something in every atheist, itching to believe, and something in every believer, itching to doubt.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

232. “What we forgive too freely doesn’t stay forgiven.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

233. “What you can’t get out of, get into wholeheartedly.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

234. “Nobody ever loved anybody like everybody wants to be loved.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

235. “When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

236. “Anything you do from the heart enriches you, but sometimes not till years later.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

237. “When their children fail to charm others, few parents can stay neutral.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

238. “Each day, the American housewife turns toward television as toward a lover. She feels guilty about it, and well she might, for he’s covered with warts and is only after her money.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

239. “God is less careful than General Motors, for He floods the world with factory rejects.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

240. “Your money, or your life. We know what to do when a burglar makes this demand of us, but not when God does.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

241. “My religious position: I think that God could do a lot better, and I’m willing to give Him the chance.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

242. “The neurotic has perfect vision in one eye, but he cannot remember which.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

243. “If you see in your children most of your own faults, you have failed as a parent, but succeeded as a neurotic.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

244. “Men prefer brief praise, pitched high; women are satisfied with praise in a lower key, just so it goes on and on.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

245. “Tragedy isn’t getting something, or failing to get it; it’s losing something you already have.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

246. “We are like people with short-term leases on summer cottages; we can never seem to make our provisions come out even with our stay.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

247. “If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

248. “Many of us are equal to life’s emergencies who cannot bear its day-after-dayness.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

249. “Your best work always seems to have been done by someone else.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

250. “The neurotic believes that life has meaning, but that his life hasn’t.”

— Mignon McLaughlin