This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
Confidence | People |
The conversation flagged. Madame Bovary frequently relapsed into silence, while Leon himself seemed ill at ease. He was seated on a low chair near the fire, and kept turning over the ivory needle-case in his fingers. She plied her needle, pressing down the hem of the cloth from time to time with her nail. She did not speak, and he too held his peace, just as entranced by her silence as he would have been by her words.
People |
One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
People | Punishment |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
First stanza: Millions now living will never die. Second stanza: No more war.
Individual | People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.
People | Popularity |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I, but the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.
People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air?that progress made under the shadow of the policeman?s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave? In any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct to side with the citizen? I am against all efforts to make men virtuous by law.
Creativity | Energy | Enthusiasm | Freedom | Good | People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
Controversy | Love | People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
People |
When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds ? like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.
People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Devil |
You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.
Devil |