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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
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
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken
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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
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- 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
Life is a constant oscillation
between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- H. L. Mencken
Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- 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
For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H.L. Mencken
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken
For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- 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
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
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
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- 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
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken
Puritanism. The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken
The believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- 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)
Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen
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
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
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 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
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde
It is what a man thinks of himself
that really determines his fate.
- Henry David Thoreau
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth,
and if a man does not know what a thing is,
it is at least an increase in knowledge
if he knows what it is not.
- Carl Jung
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.
As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
- The Bible
Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.
- Mark Twain
A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
- Seneca
A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.
- Yiddish Proverb
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
One man with courage makes a majority.
- old saying probably repeated by Andrew Jackson
(falsely attributed to Jefferson)
When I look back on all these worries,
I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed
that he had had a lot of trouble in his life,
most of which had never happened.
- Winston Churchill
The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man
are fixed upon the same creation;
but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.
- Albert Pike
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.
As long as a man stands in his own way,
everything seems to be in his way.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else.
- George Savile
Each man is the architect of his own fate.
- Appius Claudius
An honest man is always a child.
- Socrates
Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head,
and knows not that it brings abundance
to drive away the hunger.
- Saint Basil
When the tempest rages, when the thunders roar,
and the lightnings blaze around us
it is then that the truly brave man stands firm at his post.
- Luther Martin
Great and good are seldom the same man.
- Winston Churchill
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,
but he is brave five minutes longer.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day,
teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
- Chinese Proverb
If a man loses his reverence for any part of life,
he will lose his reverence for all of life.
- Albert Schweitzer
Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
- Albert Schweitzer
A wise man hears one word and understands two.
- Yiddish Proverb
When you are offended at any man's fault,
turn to yourself and study your own failings.
Then you will forget your anger.
- Epictetus
Every man dies. Not every man truly lives.
- the movie Braveheart
Take a chance! All life is a chance.
The man who goes farthest is generally
the one who is willing to do and dare.
- Dale Carnegie
I would rather try to persuade a man to go along,
because once I have persuaded him, he will stick.
If I scare him, he will stay just as long
as he is scared, and then he is gone.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The Universe is one great kindergarten for man.
Everything that exists has brought
with it its own peculiar lesson.
- Orison Swett Marden
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