"Air that has been much quarreled in becomes very hard to breathe."

Mignon McLaughlin Journalism See all quotes by Mignon McLaughlin →

React to this quote

More by Mignon McLaughlin

See all

“The ideal home: big enough for you to hear the children, but not very well.”

“We have to call it "freedom": who'd die for "a lesser tyranny"?”

“The neurotic longs to touch bottom, so at least he won't have that to worry about anymore.”

“A woman asks little of love: only that she be able to feel like a heroine.”

“Every group of six or more has its inner circle, its outer circle, and its hangers-on.”

“The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone.”

Resonant Thoughts

"President Barack Obama. President Barack Obama. Nope, still can't get used to it. It's literally too good to be true. I must've died in my sleep and am now having an insane fantasy pumped into my head…"

— Charlie Brooker

Literature1932–2020

#life

"But the solution is not to “get around these stubborn, disturbing facts” of astronomy by smugly dismissing them as testimonia non grata. Nor to declare dogmatically that “we know that it can't be corr…"

— Koenraad Elst

Indology1959

#life

"In the end, we should simply imagine a joke; a long joke that's being continually retold in an accent too thick and too strange to ever be completely understood. Life is that joke. The soul is its pun…"

— Tom Robbins

Literature1932–2025

#life

"I have seen and felt the form, continuity and meaning of India’s past. History, as I see it, is being consciously lived by Indians. Attempts to complete what has happened in the past form no small par…"

— Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi

Literature1887–1971

#life