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
Related topics: Cynical Religion
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
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
Puritanism. The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken
The believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- 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
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
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- H. L. Mencken
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- 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 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, when he smells flowers,
looks around for a coffin.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken
Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- H. L. Mencken
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken
For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H.L. Mencken
The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- 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
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken
Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.
- Khalil Gibran
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
- Marianne Williamson
The mind is not a vessel to be filled
but a fire to be kindled.
- Plutarch
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
A good traveler has no fixed plans,
and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu
Everything has beauty,
but not everyone sees it.
- Confucius
The essence of life is not in
the great victories and grand failures,
but in the simple joys.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson
The beauty does not live out there;
the beauty's in my eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore
To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu
Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.
- Rabindranath Tagore
"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly,
"one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
- Hans Christian Andersen
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
- Rabindranath Tagore
Lord, grant that I might not so much
seek to be loved as to love.
- St. Francis of Assisi
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
- Lao Tzu
I am not afraid of storms
for I am learning how to sail my ship.
- Louisa May Alcott
You will not be punished for your anger,
you will be punished by your anger.
- The Buddha
Everything is a miracle,
not just the beautiful and lovely things.
- Anonymous
Treat those who are good with goodness,
and also treat those who are not good with goodness.
Thus goodness is attained.
Be honest to those who are honest,
and be also honest to those who are not honest.
Thus honesty is attained.
- Lao Tzu
I do not need anyone's permission to be my true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Self-respect is not a function of size, age, or wealth.
Breathe deep, sing loud and sweet,
"I am me, I am unique, I am magnificent."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Do not blame the thistle that you see no beauty.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
What you leave behind is not what
is engraved in stone monuments,
but what is woven into the lives of others.
- Pericles
Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If things are not as you wish,
wish them as they are.
- Yiddish Proverb
A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue,
but the parent of all other virtues.
- Cicero
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.
If we did not sometimes taste of adversity,
prosperity would not be so welcome.
- Anne Bradstreet
One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu
The opposite of courage in our society
is not cowardice, it is conformity.
- Rollo May
Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession
as they torment us with their loss.
- Epicurus
Life is not supposed to be fair.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Do not let what you cannot do
interfere with what you can do.
- John Wooden
If not us, who, if not now, when?
- Anonymous
It is not the easy or convenient life
for which I search,
but life lived to the edge
of all that I may be.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations.
I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty,
believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
- Louisa May Alcott
Imagine all the people living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us,
and the world will be as one.
- John Lennon
Truth is not defined by
how many people believe something.
Ask. Question. Think.
Decide - for yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Not everything that casts a long shadow is to be feared.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.
- Edmund Hillary
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
Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.
- A Course In Miracles (commonly misattributed to Rumi)
We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past,
but by the love we're not extending in the present.
- Marianne Williamson
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -
it is the illusion of knowledge.
- Daniel J. Boorstin
Love is granting another the space to be
the way they are and the way they are not.
- Werner Erhard
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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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