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For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken
Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- H. L. Mencken
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Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- H. L. Mencken
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband
a month before she marries him
and what she thinks of him a year afterward,
and you will have the truth about him.
- H. L. Mencken
The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken
The worst government is often the most moral.
One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane.
But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
- H. L. Mencken
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers,
looks around for a coffin.
- H. L. Mencken
Puritanism. The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken
For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H.L. Mencken
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken
The believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- H. L. Mencken
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken
Morality is the theory that every human act
must be either right or wrong,
and that 99 % of them are wrong.
- H. L. Mencken
The objection to Puritans is not that
they try to make us think as they do,
but that they try to make us do as they think.
- H. L. Mencken
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken
Life is a constant oscillation
between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- H. L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
(and hence clamorous to be led to safety)
by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins,
all of them imaginary.
- H. L. Mencken
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person
to reconcile himself to the idea that
after all God will not help him
- H. L. Mencken
We must respect the other fellow's religion,
but only in the sense and to the extent
that we respect his theory that
his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
- H. L. Mencken
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie.
I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave.
And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
- H.L. Mencken
Interesting.
You Earth people glorify organized violence for 40 centuries,
but you imprison those who employ it privately.
- the character Spock in the television series Star Trek
The African is my brother but he is
my younger brother by several centuries.
- Albert Schweitzer
I do not believe in the God of the theologians;
but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt.
- Thomas Edison
If I had known what it would be like to have it all -
I might have been willing to settle for less.
- Lily Tomlin
She's been diagnosed as a paranoid hypochondriac.
Doctors think she may be faking.
- the movie Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off
until the day after tomorrow what should
have been done the day before yesterday.
- Napoleon Hill
I do not fear death.
I had been dead for billions and billions
of years before I was born,
and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
- Mark Twain
In every country and every age,
the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
Might I perhaps win my wings?
I've been waiting for over 200 years now, sir,
and people ARE beginning to talk.
- It's a Wonderful Life (1946 movie)
Beauty is an outward gift,
which is seldom despised,
except by those to whom it has been refused.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
- Charles H. Duell [attributed]
(Commissioner, US Patent Office, in 1899)
It has always been a mystery to me
how men can feel themselves honored
by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
The claim "I was only following orders" has been used
to justify too many tragedies in our history.
- Captain Picard of the television series
STAR TREK: The Next Generation
He who joyfully marches in rank and file
has already earned my contempt.
He has been given a large brain by mistake,
since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
- Albert Einstein
So far, this is the oldest I've been.
- George Carlin
Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Man's nature is not essentially evil.
Brute nature has been known to
yield to the influence of love.
You must never despair of human nature.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
The attempt to combine wisdom and power
has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.
- Albert Einstein
Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth
until the hour of separation.
- Khalil Gibran
It has been my experience that folks who
have no vices, have very few virtues.
- Abraham Lincoln
While civilization has been improving our houses,
it has not equally improved
the men who are to inhabit them.
It has created palaces, but it was
not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
- Henry David Thoreau
Footprints in the sands of time...
Where have you been?
Where are you going?
Why are you going there?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The world is perfect. It's a mess.
It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives.
- Joseph Campbell
For all sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these, "It might have been.
- John Greenleaf Whittier
When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart,
and you shall see that in truth
you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
- Khalil Gibran
Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy
between the genius and his human qualities
that one has to ask oneself whether
a little less talent might not have been better.
- Carl Jung
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
- Satchel Paige
Life is too short, time is too precious,
and the stakes are too high
to dwell on what might have been.
- Hilary Clinton
No person was ever honored for what he received.
Honor has been the reward for what he gave.
- Calvin Coolidge
A person isn't who they are during
the last conversation you had with them -
they're who they've been
throughout your whole relationship.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Who made the rule that life has to be so serious?
One would think that "life is serious" had been engraved
upon stone tablets to judge from how most lives are lived.
Get a life, smile broadly, sing loudly,
paint your rooms in bold colors,
search every rabbit hole for a magical white bunny,
have caviar for breakfast and oatmeal for dinner,
wear a purple coat with a red hat - dance lightly with life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The road to perdition has ever been
accompanied by lip service to an ideal.
- Albert Einstein
BERLIN: PROCLAMATION TO THE GERMAN NATION FEBRUARY 1, 1933
The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty
to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation.
It will preserve and defend those basic principles
on which our nation has been built.
It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality,
and the family as the basis of national life....
- Adolf Hitler
The wish for healing has always been half of health.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Lovers who have been left, lose confidence and become afraid.
They learn to leave relationships first.
The broken hearted become the heart breakers.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
No written law has ever been more binding
than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
- Carrie Chapman Catt
One never notices what has been done;
one can only see what remains to be done.
- Marie Curie
What work I have done I have done because it has been play.
If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.
- Mark Twain
Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man.
They die up to a point.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
My theory has always been, that if we are to dream,
the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter,
than the gloom of despair.
- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared
believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.
- Bruce Barton
Love comes to those who still hope
even though they've been disappointed,
to those who still believe
even though they've been betrayed,
to those who still love
even though they've been hurt before.
- Anonymous
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues
have never been discovered.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I often regret that I have spoken;
never that I have been silent.
- Publilius Syrus
Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until
we have been stuck, incapacitated,
or blown off course for awhile.
- David Whyte
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.