Marya Mannes (November 14, 1904 – September 13, 1990) was an American author and critic, known for her caustic but insightful observations of American life. Mannes also wrote under the pen name of, "Sec."
Self-restraint may be alien to the human temperament, but humanity without restraint will dig its own grave.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Money is not an aphrodisiac: the desire it may kindle in the female eye is more for the cash than the carrier.
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.
People on horses look better than they are. People in cars look worse than they are.
Women are repeatedly accused of taking things personally. I cannot see any other honest way of taking them.
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.
The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other.
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.
The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason.
It is a marvellous thing to be physically a woman if only to know the marvels of a man.
The faucet leak, and learn to leave them so.
I would call an intellectual one whose instrument of work - his mind - is also his major source of pleasure; a man whose entertainment is his intelligence.
The suppression of civil liberties is too many less a matter for horror than the curtailment of the freedom to profit.
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 process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained. By the age of fifty you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth.
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.