Phyllis McGinley was an U.S. writer of children's books and poet about the positive aspects of suburban life.
McGinley was born in Ontario, Oregon. At age 3, her family moved to Colorado, and on to Ogden, Utah after her father died.
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(28 quotes found)
“Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!”
Phyllis McGinley
“When blithe to argument I come, / Though armed with facts, and merry, / May Providence protect me from / The fool as adversary, / Whose mind to him a kingdom is / Where reason lacks dominion, / Who calls conviction prejudice / And prejudice opinion.”
“Nothing fails like success; nothing is so defeated as yesterday's triumphant Cause.”
“Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.”
“Of course we women gossip on occasion. But our appetite for it is not as avid as a mans. It is in the boys gyms, the college fraternity houses, the club locker rooms, the paneled offices of business that gossip reaches its luxuriant flower.”
“Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same. Gossip is the tool of the poet, the shop-talk of the scientist, and the consolation of the housewife, wit, tycoon and intellectual. It begins in the nursery and ends when speech is past.”
“The system -- the American one, at least -- is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet.”
“I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age.”