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
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
Time |
The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties; all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Lawyer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.
Men |
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 |
The famous assertion by Einstein that the length of a rod depends on its velocity and on the chosen definition of simultaneity. ...is based on the fact that we do not measure the length of the rod, but its projection on a system at rest. How the length of the projection depends on the choice of simultaneity can be illustrated by reference to a photograph taken through a focal-plane shutter. Such a shutter... consists of a wide band with a horizontal slit, which slides down vertically. Different bands are photographed successively on the film. Moving objects are therefore strangely distorted; the wheels of a rapidly moving car for instance, appear to be slanted. The shape of the objects in the picture will evidently depend on the speed of the shutter. Similarly, the length of the moving segment depends on the definition of simultaneity. One definition of simultaneity differs from another because events that are simultaneous for one definition occur successively for another. What may be a simultaneity projection of a moving segment for one definition is a "focal-plane shutter photograph" for another.
Men |
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.
The eye of the master fattens the horse.
Experience | Life | Life | Principles | Psychology | Time | Youth | Youth |
Thank you, pretty pussy, was the death of my cat.
Death | Good | Hypothesis | Individual | Phenomena | Sense | Loss |