PHYLLIS MCGINLEY

Seventy is wormwood, Seventy is gall But its better to be seventy, Than not alive at all.

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.

Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.

In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!

Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.

A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.

Those wearing tolerance for a label call other views intolerable.

Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.

Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing, peace is the measure.

Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.

Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.

A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can't fold a paper in a crowded train.

Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with a man, one man.

Nothing fails like success; nothing is so defeated as yesterday's triumphant Cause.

Say what you will, making a marriage work is a woman's business.

Marriage is a lot of things-an alliance, a sacrament, a comedy, or a mistake; but it is definitely not a partnership because that implies equal gain. And every right-thinking woman knows the profit in matrimony is by all odds hers.

A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.

Cocktail parties ... are usually not parties at all but mass ceremonials designed to clear up at one great stroke a wealth of obligations.

For the hearts of nurses are solid gold, / But their heels are flat and their hands are cold, / And their voices lilt with a lilt that's falser / Than the smile of an exhibition waltzer. / Yes, nurses can cure you, nurses restore you, / But nurses are bound that they do things for you.

Of the small gifts of heaven, / It seems to me a more than equal share / At birth was given / To girls with curly hair.

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.

It is the leisured, I have noticed, who rebel the most at an interruption of routine.

Tomorrow will come and today will pass, / But the hearts of the young are brittle as glass.

Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade and to give men their freedom.