Phyllis McGinley
Phyllis McGinley
Phyllis McGinleywas a Pulitzer Prizewinning American author of children's books and poetry. Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth21 March 1905
CountryUnited States of America
jobs ungrateful world
To be a housewife is a difficult, a wrenching, sometimes an ungrateful job if it is looked on only as a job. Regarded as a profession, it is the noblest as it is the most ancient of the catalogue. Let none persuade us differently or the world is lost indeed.
reading poetry pastime
Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.
book thinking clothes
Borrow my umbrellas, my clothes, my money, and I will likely not think of them again. But borrow my books and I will be on your track like a bloodhound until they are returned.
book maturity needs
There are books that one needs maturity to enjoy just as there are books an adult can come on too late to savor.
garden rivers spiders
I sing Connecticut, her charms / Of rivers, orchards, blossoming ridges. / I sing her gardens, fences, farms, / Spiders and midges.
party cocktails cocktail-parties
Cocktail parties ... are usually not parties at all but mass ceremonials designed to clear up at one great stroke a wealth of obligations ...
avant-garde hard
It's hard / Keeping up with the avant-garde.
curly-hair hair spares
Ladies with curly hair / Have time to spare.
summer home successful
The successful truck gardener can never go out to dinner in the summer or spend a week end away, because his conscience tells him he has to be at home eating up his corn or packaging his beans for the freezer.
friends mistake errors
Relations are errors that Nature makes. / Your spouse you can put on the shelf. / But your friends, dear friends, are the quaint mistakes / You always commit yourself.
confusion childhood states
If childhood is still a state, it is now chiefly a state of confusion.
cake caviar dinner
Oh, princes thrive on caviar, the poor on whey and curds, / And politicians, I infer, must eat their windy words. / It's crusts that feed the virtuous, it's cake that comforts sinners, / But writers live on bread and praise at Literary Dinners.
marriage beautiful association
Say what you will, making marriage work is a woman's business. The institution was invented to do her homage; it was contrived for her protection. Unless she accepts it as such --as a beautiful, bountiful, but quite unequal association --the going will be hard indeed.
live-life men quiet
The mass of men live lives of quiet exasperation.