Marya Mannes Quotes - Page 4

In the race for money some men may come first, but man comes last.

Artists never make wars. They are too busy making life out of the matter of their visions.

In our long and obsessive passion for youth, we have - more than any other modern society - avoided direct approach to age and to dying by denying them in word, in fact, and - above all - in worth.

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.

Know the difference between Giant and Jumbo? Between two-ounce and a big two-ounce? Between a quart and a full quart? What's a tall 24-inch? What does Extra Long mean? Who's kidding who?

Ribbons a-flutter and orchids a-tremble, Yearly the vigilant Daughters assemble, Affirming in fervid and firm resolutions Their permanent veto on all revolutions.

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.

flirtation ... is a graceful salute to sex, a small impermanent spark between one human being and another, between a man and a woman not in need of fire.

A candidate for office can have no greater advantage than muddled syntax; no greater liability than a command of language.

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

In an age where the lowered eyelid is just a sign of fatigue, the delicate game of love is pining away. Freud and flirtation are poor companions.

Art can excite, titillate, please, entertain, and sometimes shock; but its ultimate function is to ennoble.

fear has always been a diminisher of life. Whether bred in the bogs of superstition or clothed in the brocades of dogma and ritual, the specter of death has reduced the living to supplicants, powerless.

Slowly the wasters and despoilers are impoverishing our land, our nature, and our beauty, so that there will not be one beach, one hill, one lane, one meadow, one forest free from the debris of man and the stigma of his improvidence.

Revelation is the marriage of knowing and feeling.

The New York voice reflects its diversity, its foreignness, and, inevitably, the sense of superiority New Yorkers feel or come to feel. It says, without saying, We Know.

All people talk of money sometimes, everywhere. But not for all people, everywhere, is money the addiction, the obsession, the stimulant, that it seems to be in New York. It is a large part of the clamor, and it is the voice - quite literally - of the man in the street.

performance is an act of faith.

the car, by bisecting the human outline, diminishes it, producing a race of half-people in a motion not of their own making