Marya Mannes

Women are repeatedly accused of taking things personally. I cannot see any other honest way of taking them.

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.

In our society those who are in reality superior in intelligence can be accepted by their fellows only if they pretend they are not.

All really great lovers are articulate, and verbal seduction is the surest road to actual seduction.

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.

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

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.

In aid, the proper attitude is one omitting gratitude.

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.