This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.
Day |
Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra
I think that I need to learn a lot, a lot.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Believing passionately in the palpably not true... is the chief occupation of mankind.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't they be married, too.
The principal thing in this world is to keep one's soul aloft.
The finest works of art are those in which there is the least matter. The closer expression comes to thought, the more the word clings to the idea and disappears, the more beautiful the work of art.
Words |
We were Red Romantics, perfectly ridiculous to be sure, but in full bloom. The little good which remains to me comes from that epoch.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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The United Nations continues to sense as the forum where nations whose interests clash may lay their cases before world opinion. It still provides the essential escape valve without which the slow build-up of pressures would have long since resulted in catastrophic explosion.
Day |
In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.
Evil |
Love, in distinction from friendship, is killed, or rather extinguished, the moment it is displayed in public.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Morality and honor are not to be confused. The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
Words |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The woman who is not pursued sets up the doctrine that pursuit is offensive to her sex, and wants to make it a felony. No genuinely attractive woman has any such desire. She likes masculine admiration, however violently expressed, and is quite able to take care of herself. More, she is well aware that very few men are bold enough to offer it without a plain invitation, and this awareness makes her extremely cynical of all women who complain of being harassed, beset, storied, and seduced. All the more intelligent women that I know, indeed, are unanimously of the opinion that no girl in her right senses has ever been actually seduced since the world began;
Words |
Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland
No Winter lasts forever, no Spring skips its turn. April is a promise that May is bound to keep, and we know it.
Evil |
For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and Support are the same.
Words |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
No government, of its own motion, will increase its own weakness, for that would mean to acquiesce in its own destruction... governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. It?s one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
Evil | Man | Pleasure | Understanding |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
What makes philosophy so tedious is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who sought to cure a slight hyperacidity by prescribing a carload of burned oyster-shells.
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H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer.
Sight is not faith, and hearing is not faith, neither is feeling faith; but believing when we neither see, hear nor feel is faith; and everywhere the Bible tells us our salvation is to be by faith. Therefore we must believe before we feel, and often against our feelings, if we would honor God by our faith.
Evil |