This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I do not pretend, of course, that I have never done it; mere politeness forces one to it; there are women who sulk and grow bellicose unless one at least makes the motions of kissing them. But what I mean is that I have never found the act a tenth part as agreeable as poets, the authors of musical comedy librettos, and (on the contrary side) chaperones and the gendarmerie make it out. The physical sensation, far from being pleasant, is intensely uncomfortable?the suspension of respiration, indeed, quickly resolves itself into a feeling of suffocation?and the posture necessitated by the approximation of lips and lips is unfailingly a constrained and ungraceful one. Theoretically, a man kisses a woman perpendicularly, with their eyes, those windows of the soul, synchronizing exactly. But actually, on account of the incompressibility of the nasal cartilages, he has to incline either his or her head to an angle of at least 60 degrees, and the result is that his right eye gazes insanely at the space between her eyebrows, while his left eye is fixed upon some vague spot behind her. An instantaneous photograph of such a maneuvre, taken at the moment of incidence, would probably turn the stomach of even the most romantic man, and force him, in sheer self-respect, to renounce kissing as he has renounced leap-frog and walking on stilts.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
In this world which we enter, appearing from a nowhere, and from which we disappear into a nowhere, Being and Appearing coincide.
Time |
What really distinguishes this generation in all countries from earlier generations... is its determination to act, its joy in action, the assurance of being able to change things by one's own efforts.
Time |
When I have an argument with someone, even with someone I am not very close with, I can't sleep at night thinking about it. It's terrible. But I still manage speak out frankly because I have also been gifted with the ability to read people. I can sense when they start to get irritated with me, and then, I shift.
The product of movement and counter-movement is tension. When tension ? working strength ? is expressed, it endows the work of art with the living effect of coordinated, though opposing, forces.
Time |
What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
Monumentality is an affair of relativity. The truly monumental can only come about by means of the most exact and refined relation between parts. Since each thing carries both a meaning of its own and an associated meaning in relation to something else ? its essential value is relative. We speak of the mood we experience when looking at a landscape. This mood results from the relation of certain things rather than from their separate actualities. This is because objects do not in themselves possess the total effect they give when interrelated.
People |
Poor men do penance for rich men's sins.
Experience | Openness | People | Personality | Safe |
Public money is like holy water, every one helps himself to it.
Nothing improves the taste of pasta more than a good appetite.
The eye of the master fattens the horse.
Experience | Life | Life | Principles | Psychology | Time | Youth | Youth |
Take the will for the deed.
Focus | Government | People | Price | Government |
Penny and penny laid up will be many.
Diversity | People | Understanding | Understand |