Top 350 Mignon McLaughlin Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “A good executive is one who makes people contentedly settle for less than they meant to get, in return for more than they meant to give.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

302. “Neurotics would like to sleep all the time, and to be awakened only when there is good news.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

303. “Neurotics dream of a good life, or a great suicide note.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

304. “In life, as in restaurants, we swallow a lot of indigestible stuff just because it comes with the dinner.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

305. “If I knew what I was so anxious about, I wouldn’t be so anxious.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

306. “Others settle for small rewards; the neurotic must always go for broke.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

307. “Most sermons sound to me like commercials – but I can’t make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

308. “If your children spend most of their time in other people’s houses, you’re lucky; if they all congregate at your house, you’re blessed.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

309. “The first two days of a vacation are endless; then it flies.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

310. “Failure can get to be a rather comfortable old friend.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

311. “Flesh goes on pleasuring us, and humiliating us, right to the end.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

312. “An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners’ names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

313. “People find it hard to be both comic and serious, though life manages it easily enough.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

314. “You never realize how tacky your furniture is till you try to give it to the Salvation Army and they won’t take it.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

315. “Theatre audiences can’t be made to think and cry: at best, they can be made to think and laugh, or to feel and cry.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

316. “When first we fall in love, we feel that we know all there is to know about life, and perhaps we are right.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

317. “We have a terror of seeming to exert ourselves, lest it be noticed that we exerted ourselves and did not succeed.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

318. “Even in the same family, one child will always instinctively know when to ask for things, and another won’t.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

319. “The woman just ahead of you at the supermarket checkout has all the delectable groceries you didn’t even know they carried.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

320. “It’s awesome to realize that if your greatest potential talent is for riding a bicycle upside down on a high wire, you will somehow discover it.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

321. “It does not undo harm to acknowledge that we have done it; but it undoes us not to acknowledge it.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

322. “No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half thought of it ourselves.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

323. “Neurotics are anxiety prone, accident prone, and often just prone.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

324. “Affairs are just as disillusioning as marriage, and much less restful.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

325. “What we love about love is the fever, which marriage puts to bed and cures.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

326. “A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel: expensive, but worth it.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

327. “There are now electrical appliances with the main unit so sealed in that it cannot be got at for repair. There have always been human beings like that.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

328. “Without enthusiasm, virtue functions not at all, and vice only poorly.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

329. “The neurotic feels as though trapped in a gas-filled room where at any moment someone, probably himself, will strike a match.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

330. “My thoughts, I guess, are bitter: who but the bitter have thoughts?”

— Mignon McLaughlin

331. “Neurotics think of the past with resentment, and the future with dread; the present just doesn’t exist.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

332. “When we discuss those we love with those who do not love them, the end of love is near.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

333. “The way the neurotic sees it: bars on his door mean that he’s locked in; bars on your door mean that he’s locked out.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

334. “Cash is the one gift everyone despises and no one turns down.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

335. “With men, as with women, the main struggle is between vanity and comfort; but with men, comfort often wins.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

336. “Your children tell you casually years later what it would have killed you with worry to know at the time.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

337. “Creative work is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and the only one we will gladly interrupt.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

338. “Neurosis is no worse than a bad cold; you ache all over, and it’s made you a mess, but you won’t die from it.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

339. “Goods are displayed by thousands of shopkeepers with a sense of beauty that finds no other outlet.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

340. “The neurotic would like to trust his analyst – if only because he’s paying him so much money. But he can’t – because if the analyst really cared, he’d be doing it for nothing.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

341. “It’s easy enough to get along with a loved and loving child – at least till you try to get him to do something.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

342. “If you hate your lot but wouldn’t trade it, it’s not your lot you hate.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

343. “Few women care what a man looks like, and a good thing too.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

344. “When women feel they have learned to forgive their mothers – and men, their fathers – all it usually means is that they’ve decided to allow themselves the same kind of behavior.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

345. “We cough because we can’t help it, but others do it on purpose.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

346. “How can a man marry wisely in his twenties? The girl he’s going to wind up wanting hasn’t even been born.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

347. “Many marriages are simply working partnerships between businessmen and housekeepers.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

348. “Neurotics are sure that no one understands them, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

349. “It is always safe to tell people that they’re looking wonderful.”

— Mignon McLaughlin

350. “The neurotic keeps minute track of his enemies; it is only his friends he is careless about.”

— Mignon McLaughlin