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
What the South really needs is fewer scrub bulls ? on the human level.
Will |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
Will |
All well-ordered and modern states can only base themselves upon Courts of Justice and Conduct of Laws which are just, correct and geared towards the protection of the rights of individuals. Justice is a product of education.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature? the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
Will |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Religion, like poetry, is simply a concerted effort to deny the most obvious realities.
Will |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The extortions and oppressions of government will go on so long as such bare fraudulence deceives and disarms the victims - so long as they are ready to swallow the immemorial official theory that protesting against the stealings of the archbishop's secretary's nephew's mistress' illegitimate son is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
Will |
It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.
Love |
How different in 1963 are the attitudes of men. We then existed in an atmosphere of suffocating pessimism. Today, cautious yet buoyant optimism is the prevailing spirit. But each one of us here knows that what has been accomplished is not enough. The United Nations judgments have been and continue to be subject to frustration, as individual member-states have ignored its pronouncements and disregarded its recommendations. The Organization's sinews have been weakened, as member states have shirked their obligations to it. The authority of the Organization has been mocked, as individual member-states have proceeded, in violation of its commands, to pursue their own aims and ends.
Will |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual.
Unlike thoughts an ideas, feelings, passions and emotions can no more become part and parcel of the world of appearances than can our inner organs. What appears in the outside world in addition to physical signs is only what we make of them through the operation of thought.
Will |
The language of the soul in its mere expressive stage, prior to its transformation and transfiguration through thought, is not metaphorical; it does not depart from the senses and uses no analogies when it talks in terms of physical sensations.
Will |
Beyond 2050 the world population may start to decrease if women across the world will have, on average, less than 2 children. But that decrease will be slow.
Will |
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.
To show one?s anger is one form of self-presentation: I decide what is fit for appearance. In other words, the emotions I feel are no more meant to be shown in their unadulterated state than the inner organs by which we live.
Will |
To worship the product and ignore its development leads to dilettantism and reaction. Art cannot result from sophisticated, frivolous, or superficial effects.