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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
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
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
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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- 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
For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- 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 urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken
The believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- H. L. Mencken
Life is a constant oscillation
between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- 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
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- 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
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- H. L. Mencken
Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- 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 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
Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
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)
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde
The full measure of a man is
not to be found in the man himself,
but in the colors and textures that
come alive in others because of him.
- Albert Schweitzer
Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu
If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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
Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:
"If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nothing can stop the man with the right
mental attitude from achieving his goal;
nothing on earth can help the man
with the wrong mental attitude.
- Thomas Jefferson
Try not to become a man of success,
but rather try to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates
Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding
and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The value of a man should be seen in what he gives
and not in what he is able to receive.
- Albert Einstein
The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion
to his commitment to excellence,
regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.
- Vince Lombardi
As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
- The Bible
A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
- Seneca
The gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor man perfected without trials.
- Confucius
Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready
for his opportunity when it comes.
- Benjamin Disraeli
A man is but the product of his thoughts -
what he thinks, he becomes.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right.
Men will believe what they see.
- Henry David Thoreau
A wise man will make haste to forgive,
because he knows the true value of time,
and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
- Samuel Johnson
If a man does not know what port he is steering for,
no wind is favorable to him.
- Seneca
A man who as a physical being
is always turned toward the outside,
thinking that his happiness lies outside him,
finally turns inward and
discovers that the source is within him.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Every man must decide whether he will
walk in the light of creative altruism
or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Is the babe young? When I behold it,
it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
- Henry David Thoreau
A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Before you criticize a man,
walk a mile in his shoes.
- Anonymous
Each man is the architect of his own fate.
- Appius Claudius
The Universe is one great kindergarten for man.
Everything that exists has brought
with it its own peculiar lesson.
- Orison Swett Marden
We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me,
that man with all his noble qualities...
still bears in his bodily frame
the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
- Charles Darwin
I submit to you that if a man hasn't
discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Whatever your life's work is, do it well.
A man should do his job so well that the living,
the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Anger is a killing thing:
it kills the man who angers,
for each rage leaves him less than he had been before -
it takes something from him.
- Louis L'Amour
A man can do only what he can do.
But if he does that each day he can sleep at night
and do it again the next day.
- Albert Schweitzer
For man with no forgiveness in heart,
life worse punishment than death.
- Miyagi: character in the movie Karate Kid 2
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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