Puritans will never believe it, but life is full of disagreeable things that aren't even good for you.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) was an American journalist and editor best known for her aphorisms, many of which were collected in her long-running series The Neurotic’s Notebook. Writing in mid‑20th‑century America, she often skewered moral earnestness and the habit of justifying pleasure or discomfort with a supposed “lesson.” This line fits her characteristic, wry pushback against puritanical or self-improving rationalizations: it suggests that not every unpleasant experience is ennobling, medicinal, or morally useful—sometimes it is simply disagreeable, and that is part of ordinary life.

The quip targets a puritan mindset that expects suffering to be either deserved or beneficial—pain as punishment, or hardship as character-building. McLaughlin undercuts that consoling logic by insisting on a more unsentimental realism: life contains discomforts that have no redeeming payoff. The humor comes from treating this as a scandal to “Puritans,” as if the world ought to be morally tidy. The aphorism’s significance lies in its refusal to romanticize adversity; it validates the experience of pointless irritation and suggests that maturity includes accepting randomness and inconvenience without forcing them into a narrative of self-improvement.