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Rosemary Mahoney Quotes

Powerful Rosemary Mahoney for Daily Growth

About Rosemary Mahoney

Rosemary Mahoney, an acclaimed American journalist and author, was born on June 15, 1938, in New York City to Irish immigrants. Her early years were marked by a passion for reading and writing, nurtured by her mother, who instilled in her the love for books and storytelling. Mahoney attended Catholic schools and later graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in English. In 1962, Mahoney joined Time Inc., where she worked for over two decades, contributing to various publications like Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, and People. Her journalistic career spanned diverse topics, from politics and sports to entertainment and culture, earning her a reputation as an insightful and engaging writer. One of Mahoney's most significant works was "Citizen Lane: An American's Odyssey" (1976), a biography of playwright Tennessee Williams that offered a unique perspective on the complexities of his life and work. Another notable book, "Metropolitan Lives: Stories from the Heart of New York City" (1983), showcased her skill in chronicling the lives of ordinary people against the backdrop of the vibrant city she loved. Mahoney's writing was marked by a keen insight into human nature and a deep empathy for her subjects, qualities that resonated with readers and critics alike. Her work often explored themes of identity, ambition, and the pursuit of happiness in the context of contemporary American life. In her later years, Mahoney continued to write, teach writing at the University of California, Berkeley, and work as a freelance journalist. She passed away on January 18, 2014, leaving behind a rich literary legacy that continues to inspire readers today.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do."

This quote emphasizes that genuine passion for one's work is a fundamental prerequisite for achieving greatness. It suggests that when we are deeply invested in and enjoy our work, we are more likely to produce outstanding results, as opposed to simply going through the motions out of obligation or expectation. Essentially, Mahoney's message underscores the importance of finding fulfillment in one's profession and pursuing it with enthusiasm and dedication.

"Success seems to be connected with action, successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit."

This quote emphasizes that success is closely linked with continuous action and perseverance in the face of mistakes or setbacks. It suggests that successful individuals maintain momentum, learn from their errors, but refuse to give up. Instead, they keep pushing forward, turning potential failures into stepping stones towards their goals.

"Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle."

This quote encourages self-belief and resilience. By believing in oneself, one acknowledges their inner strength, which can overcome any challenges or obstacles they may face. It suggests that despite the difficulties life presents, there is a power within each individual that surpasses those hurdles when combined with unwavering faith in themselves.

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."

This quote suggests that rather than wasting time and energy attempting to destroy or dismantle existing, unwanted situations, it's more productive to invest in creating something fresh and better instead. In other words, the key to change is not only about removing what is undesirable, but also about constructively building a new reality that aligns with one's goals and aspirations.

"Don't wait for opportunity, create it."

This quote emphasizes personal initiative and proactivity. Rather than passively waiting for opportunities to present themselves, Rosemary Mahoney suggests that we should actively create our own opportunities. It encourages individuals to take control of their lives and destinies, seeking out new experiences, challenges, and possibilities, rather than merely reacting to circumstances as they arise. This mindset empowers individuals, fostering growth, resilience, and self-reliance.

A majority of my blind students at the International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs in Trivandrum, India, a branch of Braille Without Borders, came from the developing world: Madagascar, Colombia, Tibet, Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal and India.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Blind, Students, Borders, Kenya

Most of us who have healthy eyesight are extremely attached to our vision, often without being conscious that we are. We depend heavily on our eyes, and yet we rarely give them a second thought. I, at least, am this way. The physical world is almost hyper-vivid to me.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Thought, Depend, Almost, Eyesight

To me, the remarkable thing is it's pretty much unanimous the way blind people have been perceived in all cultures and for millennia. The first is, if they can't see, they must be stupid. The second one is, and this is a very old one, that blindness is such a terrible thing that it must be a curse from God for some evil that you committed.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Stupid, Some, Very, Old One

I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I'm on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I'll sit down at the desk and discover that what I've written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Hands, Down, Some, Inevitably

The Egyptian Nile, though it does have its own particular hazards, is subject to none of what I find in Rhode Island. Since the Aswan High Dam was built in 1973, the Nile has become something of a grand canal. It is wide, flat, slow, and so calm it verges on the geriatric.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Own, Subject, Nile, Egyptian

Writing is not a genteel profession; it's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Kind, Dirty, Profession, Nasty

I think the most useful thing you can do as a writer is to reconstruct real life with all its color, hardship, joy, and intrigue. If you're interested in people, you honor them best, I think, by making the fullest possible picture of them. Your subjects may - and from my experience probably will - protest your portrait of them.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Color, Honor, I Think, Useful Thing

Nobody's perfect, and to try to pretend you're perfect is an exhausting fool's errand.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Fool, Try, Perfect, Errand

It's rare that I'm able to get to my desk in the morning without stopping halfway there, turning around, and going in the opposite direction because of a pressing need to straighten all the pictures on the walls, floss my teeth a second time, and make certain that there really are 100 postage stamps in the roll of stamps I bought yesterday.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Without, Roll, Around, Pressing

When I was a senior in high school, I went to Ireland to study Irish Gaelic. And after one semester at Trinity College, I went way out to the west coast of Ireland and rented a little house by myself.

- Rosemary Mahoney

College, Study, Irish, Ireland

A lot of Polish and Russian Jews had this experience: they would emigrate, thinking they were on their way to New York. Then their captains would stop in Dublin and say, 'Everybody off.' They would leave, and by the time they discovered they weren't in America, they didn't have enough money to continue.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Everybody, By The Time, Enough Money

One of the most persistent misconceptions about blindness is that it is a curse from God for misdeeds perpetrated in a past life, which cloaks the blind person in spiritual darkness and makes him not just dangerous, but evil.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Blind, Dangerous, About, Past Life

I'm not confident, and yet I'm oddly confident. You have to have a certain amount of ego to be a writer in the first place, and to write things that might be controversial. I've wasted a lot of time worrying about it: am I tough enough to do it? Well, I guess, or I wouldn't have done it. The day it's too difficult for me, I guess I'll stop.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Ego, Confident, About, Oddly

Americans generally associate boats with leisure. Vastly less prosperous, Egyptians associate them with nothing but labour. Rowing a boat is something a fisherman is forced to do to make a living; how could such an activity bring me - a woman no less - pleasure?

- Rosemary Mahoney

Woman, Activity, Forced, Vastly

As a teen-ager I was constantly trying to please people, which I guess is true of all adolescents.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Trying, Which, Guess, Adolescent

I fear that my mind would starve and that I might find myself in danger if I had no visual information, that it's chiefly the light, the shapes, the spaces, the colors that I see that compel me to keep moving forward in life and that keep me safe.

- Rosemary Mahoney

I See, Had, Compel, Spaces

I am like a security camera ever on the watch. The furtive quality of vision feels to me like an incredibly valuable weapon. Everything I see gets transformed into a private sketch or painting in my mind, stored away for future reference, future evidence, future ammunition.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Away, Private, Feels, Transformed

I grew up in New England at the edge of the Atlantic and have for many years been an avid rower. I've rowed in various places, including the Ganges in India, the River Shannon in Ireland, and the Sea of Galilee.

- Rosemary Mahoney

India, Years, Been, Avid

In 'A Likely Story,' I wanted to recreate the events, the mood, and the imagery of my life as a teenager. I was thirty-seven when I wrote it.

- Rosemary Mahoney

My Life, Mood, Likely, Teenager

China was not at all what I expected it to be. I had an image of China as a very quaint and mysterious and peaceful place. Well, it's quaint and mysterious in some respects, but not in the ways I had thought. The people are mysterious. They don't often tell you what they feel.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Image, Very, Quaint, Respects

There's as much revealed in the way a person lifts a glass as in what they say about some political issue.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Glass, Some, Issue, Revealed

When sighted people cover their eyes or find themselves in a dark place, this is something that's very terrifying for us. And so in general, we assume that this is what blindness means. But of course, it isn't. For people who were born blind or who go blind at a very young age, that's not at all what blindness means.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Blind, Very, Terrifying, Assume

Aversion toward the blind exists for the same reason that most prejudices exist: lack of knowledge. Ignorance is a powerful generator of fear. And fear slides easily into aggression and contempt.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Reason, Blind, Prejudices, Generator

One of the many misconceptions about the blind is that they have greater hearing, sense of smell and sense of touch than sighted people. This is not strictly true. Their blindness simply forces them to recognize gifts they always had but had heretofore largely ignored.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Blind, About, Had, Misconceptions

My mother had seven children in seven years. No twins. She also had a three-legged beagle who was compelled to bite strangers, a freakishly big double-pawed tomcat who regularly left dead rabbits on the front doorstep, and 70 white mice that one or another of us had smuggled home from my father's research laboratory.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Big, Rabbits, Smuggled, Doorstep

If one person in a group of ten is missing the tip of his little finger, I will notice it almost immediately. This extreme attention to visual detail is not a virtue, just a fact of my person. It happens seemingly involuntarily and strikes me as neither good nor bad.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Fact, Bad, Almost, Notice

We always think, 'Well, for a person who's blind, it must be an amazing, joyful miracle if by some chance their sight is restored to them.' Now, this may be true for blind people who lost their vision at a later age. It's rarely true for people who were born blind or who go blind at a very young age.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Blind, Some, Very, Restored

The night sky in Egypt is a swirling mass of stars so bright and numerous the sky seems to tremble with the ice-blue weight of them.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Sky, Egypt, Numerous, Tremble

My mother was not what anyone would call sweet, and she wasn't conventional. When my brother couldn't find his shoes one morning, she said, 'Oh, for God's sake, it won't kill him not to have shoes for a day,' and sent him to school without them.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Mother, Him, Without, One Morning

Though my grandmother had picked up modern ideas in America, she still had some conflicting 19th-century Irish notions. She believed that daughters, educated though they may be, should continue to live at home until they were married.

- Rosemary Mahoney

Irish, Some, Had, Notions

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