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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers,
looks around for a coffin.
- H. L. Mencken
Related topics: Cynical
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
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
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
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- 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
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- 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
Puritanism. The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken
For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H.L. Mencken
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- 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
For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken
Life is a constant oscillation
between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- 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 believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- 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
The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- 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
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything
and the value of nothing.
- Oscar Wilde
The believer's ray of light is the cynic's sunburn.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden
Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
- Henry David Thoreau
No man is a failure who enjoys life.
- William Feather
Hardly a man in the world has an opinion
upon morals, political, or religion
which he got otherwise than
through his associations and sympathies.
- Mark Twain
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
- Socrates
Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.
- Carl Jung
It is easy enough to be pleasant
When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is,
he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
- Helen Keller
It doesn't matter how long my hair is
or what color my skin is
or whether I'm a woman or a man.
- John Lennon
A man who dares to waste one hour of time
has not discovered the value of life.
- Charles Darwin
A man too busy to take care of his health is like
a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.
- Spanish Proverb
Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty;
it is its own reward.
Everything else is in God's hands.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
If a man is proud of his wealth,
he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
- Socrates
The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.
- Anatole France
Freedom is never dear at any price.
It is the breath of life.
What would a man not pay for living?
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
I don't like that man.
I must get to know him better.
- Abraham Lincoln
All religions must be tolerated...
for every man must get to heaven in his own way.
- Epictetus
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)
The man who can't dance thinks the band is no good.
- Polish Proverb
The man with insight enough to admit his limitations
comes nearest to perfection.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
- Francis Bacon
He is a man of courage who does not run away,
but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
- Socrates
A man must be both stupid and uncharitable
who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.
- Joseph Addison
Of course I am afraid. What sane man is not?
- Luciano Pavarotti
Each man's life touches so many other lives.
- It's a Wonderful Life (1946 movie)
Interdependence is and ought to be
as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency.
Man is a social being.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
- Benjamin Franklin
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
The man form is higher than the angel form;
of all forms it is the highest.
Man is the highest being in creation,
because he aspires to freedom.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.
And man can be as big as he wants.
No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
- John F. Kennedy
Every man has his own courage,
and is betrayed because he seeks in himself
the courage of other persons.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen
Habit is habit,
and not to be flung out of the window by any man,
but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.
- Mark Twain
A man who doesn't trust himself
can never really trust anyone else.
- Cardinal De Retz
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
- Mark Twain
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation
can be trusted to act humanely
or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
- Bertrand Russell
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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