Marya Mannes Quotes

Money is not an aphrodisiac: the desire it may kindle in the female eye is more for the cash than the carrier.

The world of sight is still limitless. It is the artist who limits vision to the cramped dimensions of his own ego.

The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit.

In our long and obsessive passion for youth, we have - more than any other modern society - avoided direct approach to age and to dying by denying them in word, in fact, and - above all - in worth.

Generosity with strings is not generosity: it is a deal.

If American men are obsessed with money, American women are obsessed with weight. The men talk of gain, the women talk of loss, and I do not know which talk is the more boring.

Minds are cluttered from the age of six with the values of others-values which bear little relation to their own private capacities, needs and desires.

On Broadway money rules. Like a host of vultures, the ticket brokers, the speculators, the craft unions, the agents, the backers, the real estate owners move in on the creative body and take their bite. The world of dreams breathes in an iron lung; and without this mechanical pumping it dies.

The car, by bisecting the human outline, diminishes it, producing a race of half-people in a motion not of their own making

The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained ...

Everybody likes to see somebody else get caught for the vices practiced by themselves.

The Republicans think they have a corner on morality ...

I don't think the advertisers have any real idea of their power not only to reflect but to mold society.

You mix the affluence of the white and the poverty of the black and you do not get a civilized society. Integration on an equal level is one thing. Mixing on an unequal level is another.

Lie down and listen to the crabgrass grow The faucet leak, and learn to leave them so.

The greatest miracle of all, the human being.

For every five well-adjusted and smoothly functioning Americans, there are two who never had the chance to discover themselves. It may well be because they have never been alone with themselves.

A man at his desk in a room with a closed door is a man at work. A woman at a desk in any room is available.

Revelation is the marriage of knowing and feeling.

The art of flirtation is dying. A man and woman are either in love these days or just friends. In the realm of love, reticence and sophistication should go hand in hand, for one of the joys of life is discovery. Nowadays, instead of progressing from vous to tu, from Mister to Jim, it's 'darling' and 'come to my place' in the first hour.

By the age of fifty, you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth.

A candidate for office can have no greater advantage than muddled syntax; no greater liability than a command of language.

You cannot throw words like heroism and sacrifice and nobility and honor away without abandoning the qualities they express.

Surely the hold of great music on the listener is precisely this: that the listener is made whole; and at the same time part of an image of infinite grace and grandeur which is creation.

The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality.

It is television's primary damage that it provides ten million children with the same fantasy, ready-made and on a platter.

Certain kinds of people become Republicans and certain kinds of people become Democrats, and ... it's more than a matter of party affiliation. It's a way of thinking and being.

Self-restraint may be alien to the human temperament, but humanity without restraint will dig its own grave.

The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other.

The real demon is success-the anxieties engendered by this quest are relentless, degrading, corroding. What is worse, there is no end to this escalation of desire.

The New York voice reflects its diversity, its foreignness, and, inevitably, the sense of superiority New Yorkers feel or come to feel. It says, without saying, We Know.

It is not enough to show people how to live better: there is a mandate for any group with enormous powers of communication to show people how to be better.

Timing and arrogance are decisive factors in the successful use of talent.

When women can cherish the vulnerability of men as much as men can exult in the strength of women, a new breed could lift a ruinous yoke from both.

It's never what you say, but how you make it sound sincere.

All wars derive from lack of empathy: the incapacity of one to understand and accept the likeness or difference of another. Whether in nations or the encounters of race and sex, competition then replaces compassion, subjection excludes mutuality.

Advertisers in general bear a large part of the responsibility for the deep feelings of inadequacy that drive women to psychiatrists, pills, or the bottle.

Hoary idea, in any case, expecting a woman to surrender her name to her husband's in exchange for his. Why? Would any man submerge his identity and heritage to the woman he wed?

Euthanasia ... is simply to be able to die with dignity at a moment when life is devoid of it.

To be at peace with self, to find company and nourishment in self-this would be the test of the free and productive psyche.

The ultimate cynicism is to suspend judgment so that you are not judged.

People minus space equals Poverty ... What is living for? If the answer is a life of dignity, decency and opportunity, then every increase in population means a decrease in all three. The crowd is a threat to every single being.

Flirtation ... is a graceful salute to sex, a small impermanent spark between one human being and another, between a man and a woman not in need of fire.

What is asserted by a man is an opinion; what is asserted by a woman is opinionated. A woman with ideas and the ability to express them is something of a social embarrassment, like an unhousebroken pet.

[The sea] is the healer and the reviver, it cleanses the cavities of self-disgust and melancholy, of sloth and negation with the salt solution of life. It cures the lethargies of flesh and spirit with the slap and shake of elemental force. It cradles and comforts. Give it trust and it holds you secure; fight it and it kills.

The suppression of civil liberties is too many less a matter for horror than the curtailment of the freedom to profit.

One is as one is, and the love that can't encompass both is a poor sort of love.

Infants are interesting only to their parents.

A musical audience is at best uninspiring, at worst definitely drab ... Respectability hangs like a pall over the orchestra and the boxes; a sort of sterile sobriety ill-fitted to the passionate geometry of music.

We pity or condemn the communist peoples of the world for being bound in the chains of doctrine. So are we. Our doctrine runs as follows: Our Way is the Only Way.

In an age where the lowered eyelid is just a sign of fatigue, the delicate game of love is pining away. Freud and flirtation are poor companions.

Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive.

Ribbons a-flutter and orchids a-tremble, Yearly the vigilant Daughters assemble, Affirming in fervid and firm resolutions Their permanent veto on all revolutions.

An American who can make money, invoke God, and be no better than his neighbor, has nothing to fear but truth itself.

The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason.

Television and radio violence was considered by most experts of minimal importance as a contributory cause of youthful killing ... there were always enough experts to assure the public that crime and violence had nothing to do with crime and violence.

Know the difference between Giant and Jumbo? Between two-ounce and a big two-ounce? Between a quart and a full quart? What's a tall 24-inch? What does Extra Long mean? Who's kidding who?

To be successful in the world of art you must, of course, have talent, although very small talents have gone very far in this age. Just as the microphone gave volume to voices that had none, so does the science of press-agentry magnify limited skills into highly saleable properties.

The barbarian weapon is fission: the splitting asunder. It has been perfected for death. Our only weapon is fusion: an imperfect process still, though designed for life.

It is a marvellous thing to be physically a woman if only to know the marvels of a man.

To lead means to direct and to exact, and no man dares do either - he might be unpopular. What authority we are given now is a trinity: the grin, the generality, and God (the Word).