Helen Gurley Brown Quotations

My success was not based so much on any great intelligence but on great common sense.

Never fail to know that if you are doing all the talking, you are boring somebody.

After you're older, two things are possibly more important than any others: health and money.

Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.

You can have your titular recognition. I'll take money and power.

Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.

Nearly every glamorous, wealthy, successful career woman you might envy now started out as some kind of schlep.

One of the paramount reasons for staying attractive is so you can have somebody to go to bed with.

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork - reading, writing, thinking - can.

My father died when I was 10; my sister got polio a couple of years later and was paralyzed. So there I was - my sister in a wheel chair, my father gone, and my mother a quiet little mouse. You see, it was the '30s in the South, so my mother was not prepared to cope. So I was scared to death. And being that scared, everything afterward became a struggle not to go down the drain. Struggling became a way of life for me.

I guess I'm a survivor. There are many of us survivors and any successful woman of my age has somewhat of that in her.

You can have your titular recognition. I'll take the money and the power.

Trying to describe a good marriage is like trying to describe your adrenal glands. You know they're in there functioning but you don't really understand how they work.

some bosses are so greedy (for themselves only) they forget underlings are not thirteenth-century peasants who can be satisfied with a glass of mead and three festivals a year.

I think I'm a fairly average person, I think I have only a medium IQ. I didn't go to college, obviously.

If you're a little mouseburger, come with me. I was a mouseburger and I will help you. You're so much more wonderful than you think. Cosmopolitan is shot full of this stuff although outsiders don't realize it. It is, in its way, an inspiration magazine.

Feed the alligators and you get bigger alligators.

The only reason a man doesn't call is that he doesn't want to.

Charm is the next best asset after looks and brains - and can almost make up for looks.

Good posture is the one most important thing anybody can do now to look better.

People's lives change. To keep all your old friends is like keeping all your old clothes -- pretty soon your closet is so jammed and everything so crushed you can't find anything to wear. Help these friends when they need you; bless the years and happy times when you meant a lot to each other, but try not to have the guilts if new people mean more to you now.

We are told to value ourselves without feedback, but if nobody is making a pass at you or trying to take you to Bermuda, how are you supposed to feel? Confident?

Never expect anybody - except possibly your analyst - to be as thrilled about your sex life as you are.

I've just been so lucky. I don't know if you're really able to take advantage of your full potential until you're older. There are a few people who are incredibly gifted and make it when they are very young, but I didn't. With women it takes longer. You just keep working and when you finally get it, it feels very, very nice.

Talkers expand like bread dough.

you want to write a book for so many reasons ... The main reason ... is because it will make you well-known and beloved and popular and successful and famous and respected. You also write ... to make money, but that motivation is not first on the list.

Don't do small stuff early in your energy cycle or you'll blow your 'golden hours,' but occasionally you have to do the 'possible' to develop the momentum for the killer task.

There are not that many people who know how to edit. It's a funny tiny little obscure talent but it's very special. You have to have the feeling of popular taste.

I think you keep two sets of books. In one set, you record the truth -- how well you are really doing. This is the secret set -- just for you and loved ones. In the other set are more modest entries and statements, and these are for public consumption!

Never throw anything good away -- real wool, pure silk. Put it away and wait for it to come back.

Love doesn't drop on you unexpectedly; you have to give off signals, sort of like an amateur radio operator.

People never get tired of looking at beautiful pictures of gorgeous girls.

If you’re not a sex object, you’re in trouble.

The happiest people I know are not those who are the most beautiful, rich or famous. The happiest people I see are simply those who stay cheerful and try to cheer up others while getting through their own bad stuff

I care. I care a lot. I think of Cosmopolitan all day, and I run scared. So it's a combination of fright, caring and anxiety.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing everyone a disservice by perpetuating the idea that beautiful is better than plain, because having done everything just about that you can do, sparing no expense, and not effort, to become better looking, I know that only so much can be done.

The prerequisite for making love is to like someone enormously.

good girls go to heaven and bad girls go everywhere

Every morning when I'm thrashing around on the floor doing my solid hour of heavy exercises I'm not really doing that for anyone but myself. It makes me feel good.

I think a single woman's biggest problem is coping with the people who are trying to marry her off!

My own philosophy is if you're not having sex, you're finished. It separates the girls from the old people.

Do what's in front of you as well as possible. Keep going until you realize what you're best at.

The faster you get back to people, the less brilliant you have to be,

If you do the best you can, no matter how bad the situation, you probably are going to come out okay.

A man likes to sleep with a brainy girl. She’s a challenge. If he makes good with her, he figures he must be good himself.

There is no better way to get to know someone than to have an affair ... it can save years of lunches.

When you meet a man, don't you always idly wonder what he'd be like in bed? I do.

Being somebody is better than not being somebody vis à vis what you want out of life. If you want to talk to interesting people and have them talk to you, and if you want enough money to live someplace pleasant and to go on trips and be able to help people you love, you simply have to be somebody.

You know you can't hope yourself a better life - you must take yourself there.

If I had to choose between sex and food, I would choose food, but I'd choose sex over nearly everything else.

Get up and do it if it needs to be done, even if you hate it!

I just had the idea that all the covergirls should be gorgeous, and not just interesting, not beautiful in an offbeat or exotic way, just plain yummy gorgeous.

Two warm bodies and one cold bottle of champagne will produce something more wonderful than would happen without the champagne.

The only thing that separates successful people from the ones who aren't is the willingness to work very, very hard.

It's unrealistic to think you can only have one good product. People are not that poor. They can buy what they want.

Work with the raw material you have, namely you, and never let up.

Don't use men to get what you want in life. Get it yourself.

I guess anyone with a beautiful body, man or woman, loves to be looked at, but to admit such a thing is a little rough at times. That's why it's hard to get people to pose.

Sex is one of the three best things out there, and I don't even know what the other two are.

Now it's somewhat easier for a woman to be a film producer or something like that if she wants, though it's not that easy. But to be any kind of successful woman took a lot of doing in the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s... in the '70s it's getting simpler.

Feeling insecure is good for you. It forces you to do something better, drives you to use all your talents.