This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I've learned that you know your husband still loves you when there are two brownies left and he takes the smaller one.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, false, and he is thereby apt to acquire a doubt of everything, including his own beliefs.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
How far the gentlemen of dark complexion will get with their independence, now that they have declared it, I don?t know. There are serious difficulties in their way. The vast majority of people of their race are but two or three inches removed from gorillas: it will be a sheer impossibility, for a long, long while, to interest them in anything above pork-chops and bootleg gin.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Believed in heroes and Nietzsche, in his youth, he was a hero worshiper. First Arthur Schopenhauer's bespectacled visage stared from his shrine and after que the place of sacredness and honor was held by Richard Wagner. When the Wagner of the philosopher's dreams turned into a very prosaic Wagner of flesh and blood, there came a time of doubt and stress and suffering for poor Nietzsche. But he had courage as well as loyalty, and in the end he dashed his idol to pieces and the bit crunched underfoot.
Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.
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Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra
When people feel that something really special is happening on the stage, things change.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't they be married, too.
The complete encounter with the Lord will mark an end to history, but it will take place in history.
The information technologies which were historically born from military research are, today, on the verge of developing an offensive capability of destruction, which could tomorrow, if we?re not careful, completely destroy world peace.
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H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. They are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury.
Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks, and hobgoblins.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
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H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Liberals have many tails and chase them all.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
When a husband's story is believed, he begins to suspect his wife.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
No government as such is ever in favor of the freedom of the individual. It invariably seeks to limit that freedom, if not by overt denial, then by seeking constantly to widen its own functions.
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