Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) was an American journalist, author, and aphorist.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, McLaughlin attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She embarked on a career as a journalist and wrote short stories for such magazines as Vogue, Redbook, Glamor, and Cosmopolitan. With her husband, Time magazine editor Robert McLaughlin, Mignon co-authored the play Gayden (1948) for the 1949 Broadway season.
In the 1950s, McLaughlin began publishing aphorisms that were later accumulated in three tomes: The Neurotic’s Notebook (1963,) The Second Neurotic’s Notebook (1966,) and The Complete Neurotic’s Notebook (1981.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Mignon McLaughlin
Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Boredom, Opportunities
All women are basically in competition with each other for a handful of eligible men.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Women
The only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother’s Day are the good ones.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Mothers, Motherhood
Nostalgia for what we have lost is more bearable than nostalgia for what we have never had. … .
—Mignon McLaughlin
There are whole years for which I hope I’ll never be cross-examined, for I could not give an alibi.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Time
Always live up to your standards – by lowering them, if necessary.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Perfection
We welcome passion, for the mind is briefly let off duty.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Love is the silent saying and saying of a single name.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Love, One liners
Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Anxiety, Worry
Women who feel naked without their lipstick are well over thirty.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Women
Men prefer brief praise, pitched high; women are satisfied with praise in a lower key, just so it goes on and on.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Few of us write great novels; all of us live them.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Life
Courage can’t see around corners, but goes around them anyway.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Courage
Men really prefer reasonably attractive women; they go after the sensational ones to impress other men.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Women
We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Love
No woman wants to see herself too clearly.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Women
No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Love, Realistic Expectations
The excesses of love soon pass, but its insufficiencies torment us forever.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Love
The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: People
It’s terrifying to see someone inside of whom a vital spring seems to have been broken. It’s particularly terrifying to see him in your mirror.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Self-Discovery
In life, as in restaurants, we swallow a lot of indigestible stuff just because it comes with the dinner.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Life
“Your money, or your life”. We know what to do when a burglar makes this demand of us, but not when God does.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Money
Don’t fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever, or not at all.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Procrastination
Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Love, One liners
Men feel that women somehow drag them down, and women feel that way about men. It’s possible that both are right.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Men
The time to begin most things is ten years ago.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Procrastination
A husband only worries about a particular Other Man; a wife distrusts her whole species.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Women
True remorse is never just a regret over consequence; it is a regret over motive.
—Mignon McLaughlin
There’s nothing wrong with most men’s egos that the kowtowing of a headwaiter can’t cure.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Men
Self-confidence grows on trees, in other people’s orchards.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Confidence
We always prefer war on our own terms to peace on someone else’s.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Kindness
Too much money is as demoralizing as too little, and there’s no such thing as exactly enough.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Money
If it came true, it wasn’t much of a dream.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Goals
It’s important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to the friendship that we are not.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Friends and Friendship, Friendship
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
Topics: Ideas
Loneliness, insomnia, and change: the fear of these is even worse than the reality.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Worry
Money is much more exciting than anything it buys.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Money
We catch frightful glimpses of ourselves in the hostile eyes of others.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Self-Discovery
It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Unhappiness, One liners, Change
Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Topics: Family
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