Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Mignon McLaughlin

American Author and Journalist, Copy Editor for Vogue magazine and Managing Editor of Glamour magazine

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person."

"We're all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy."

"No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved."

"The best work is done with the heart breaking, or overflowing."

"Don't be yourself -- be someone a little nicer."

"Every society is often composed of the weakness that we're damned if we are going to show."

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."

"Anything you lose automatically doubles in value."

"In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing."

"Once you become self-conscious, there is no end to it; once you start to doubt, there is no room for anything else."

"We’d all like a reputation for generosity, and we’d all like to buy it cheap."

"True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it is a regret over motive."

"Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones."

"What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want."

"Men who don't like girls with brains don't like girls."

"The hardest learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind."

"Some women love only what they can hold in their arms; others, only what they can't."

"Life marks us all down, so it's just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves."

"It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't."

"There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today."

"Many of us go through life feeling as an actor might feel who does not like his part and does not believe in the play."

"Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before."

"Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway."

"The head never rules the heart, but just becomes its partner in crime."

"If you hate your lot but wouldn't trade it, it's not your lot you hate."

"Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense."

"Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun."

"For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance."

"It's the most unhappy people who most fear change."

"Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent."

"We lavish on animals the love we are afraid to show to people. They might not return it; or worse, they might."

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

"Our strength is often composed of the weakness we're damned if we're going to show."

"A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles."

"If you made a list of reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a lot of overlapping."

"Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man."

"Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud."

"Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers."

"There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later."

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

"Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children."

"Many are saved from sin by being so inept at it."

"The know-nothings are, unfortunately, seldom the do-nothings."

"Most sermons sound to me like commercials - but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product."

"Albert Einstein when asked what he considered to be the most powerful force in the universe answered: Compound interest! What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want."

"I'm always there to tell people that their life is not that bad. I wish it was easy to follow that advice It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not."

"If I knew what I was so anxious about, I wouldn't be so anxious."

"Every group feels strong once it has found a scapegoat."

"Humiliation is a vast country of imprecise boundaries. If you think you're there, you are. The neurotic rule: when in doubt, go ahead and feel humiliated."

"A doctor recently described to me "benign positional vertigo": it means you get dizzy in certain positions, but you can get over it without necessarily changing the position. Change "vertigo" to "anxiety," and you've summed up the neurotic's plight."