Top 350 Mignon McLaughlin Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Tragedy isn’t getting something, or failing to get it; it’s losing something you already have.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

252. “Suburb: a place that isn’t city, isn’t country, and isn’t tolerable.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

253. “If an article is attractive, or useful, or inexpensive, they’ll stop making it tomorrow; if it’s all three, they stopped making it yesterday.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

254. “Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn’t either.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

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

— Mignon McLaughlin

256. “Most of us can easily do two things at once; what’s all but impossible is to do one thing at once.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

257. “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

258. “No good neurotic finds it difficult to be both opinionated and indecisive.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

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

— Mignon McLaughlin

260. “I’m always there to tell people that their life is not that bad. I wish it was easy to follow that advice.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

261. “A bore: one who knows as well as you do what he is going to say next.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

262. “As we grow older, our capacity for enjoyment shrinks, but not our appetite for it.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

263. “The past is rich in lessons from which we would greatly profit except that the present is always so full of Special Circumstances.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

264. “Neurotic: someone who can go from the bottom to the top, and back again, without ever once touching the middle.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

265. “Neurotics make poor patriots; if you’re ashamed of something as big as yourself, it’s hard to be proud of something as small as your country.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

266. “There are three iron links in the neurotic’s chain: unloving, unlovable, unloved.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

267. “Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

268. “We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

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

— Mignon McLaughlin

270. “The trouble with women is men; the trouble with men, men.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

271. “The fault we admit to is seldom the fault we have, but it has a certain relationship to it, a somewhat similar shape, like that of a sleeve to an arm.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

272. “The neurotic longs to touch bottom, so at least he won’t have that to worry about anymore.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

273. “Neurotics are always looking for something new to overdo.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

274. “In church, sacred music would make believers of us all – but preachers can be counted on to restore the balance.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

275. “It must infuriate our children to see us always so much more forbearing with everybody else’s.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

276. “We are never more self-righteous than when giving up what we should have shunned all along.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

277. “Money is much more exciting than anything it buys.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

278. “We are keenly aware of the faults of our friends, but if they like us enough it doesn’t matter.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

279. “The young are generally full of revolt, and are often pretty revolting about it.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

280. “We are all such a waste of our potential, like three-way lamps using one-way bulbs.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

281. “Desire creates havoc when it is the only thing between two people, or when it is what’s missing.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

282. “Love requires a willingness to die; marriage, a willingness to live.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

283. “The neurotic usually obeys his own Golden Rule: Hate thy neighbor as thyself.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

284. “The neurotic’s strongest fantasy is that he has no fantasies. The real is very real to him, the unreal even more so.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

285. “We are irritated by rascals, intolerant of fools, and prepared to love the rest. But where are they?”

— Mignon McLaughlin

286. “The first-rate mind is always curious, compassionate, original, and pessimistic.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

287. “Most of our diversions do not so much delay death as accustom us to it.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

288. “Neurotics expect you to remember all the things that they tell you, and many that they don’t.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

289. “The poor have the same basic pleasures as the rich, and the rich will always resent it.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

290. “We often pray to be better, when in truth we only want to feel better.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

291. “One of life’s few really reliable pleasures: to have a family you love, and to leave them for a week.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

292. “Neurotic quarrels always have the same theme-song: Hate me and get it over with.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

293. “One day you are an apprentice, and everybody’s pet; the next, you are coldly expected to deliver. There is never sufficient warning that the second day is coming.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

294. “Women are never landlocked: they’re always mere minutes away from the briny deep of tears.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

295. “Women are the right age for just a few years; men, for most of their lives.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

296. “Don’t ask others to forgive in you a sin they’re dying to commit themselves.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

297. “Of all second-class citizens, neurotics are the only ones who are so by choice.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

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

— Mignon McLaughlin

299. “No woman wants to see herself too clearly.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

300. “At the beginning of a love affair, not even the neurotic is neurotic.”

— Mignon McLaughlin