Great Throughts Treasury

"Democracy tries an endless succession of arcana as a movie gal tries an endless series of husbands, hoping against hope for one who is sober, self-supporting, faithful, and not too watchful." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law... that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes without having a single original thought." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"On Franklin D. Roosevelt: If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he so sorely needs, he would begin fattening a missionary on the White House backyard come Wednesday." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtorss It is like trying to breed cattle with all cows and no bulls." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"If... the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant?in this respect almost alone among the philosophers?was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications." - Hannah Arendt

"A thought that has found a plastic expression must continue to expand in keeping with its own plastic idiom. A plastic idea must be expressed with plastic means just as a musical idea is expressed with musical means, or a literary idea with verbal means. Neither music nor literature are wholly translatable into other art forms; and so a plastic art cannot be created through a superimposed literary meaning. The artist who attempts to do so produces nothing more than a show-booth. He contents himself with visual story-telling. He subjects himself to a mechanistic kind of thinking which disintegrates into fragments." - Hans Hoffman

"Perceptual space is not a special space in addition to physical space, but physical space which we endow with a special subjective metric... apart from the definition of congruence in physics and that based on perception, there is no third one derived from pure visualization. Any such third definition is nothing but the definition of physical congruence to which our normative function has adjusted the subjective experience of congruence." - Hans Reichenbach

"Not all words require an answer." - Italian Proverbs

"One devil drives out another." - Italian Proverbs

"People get the government they deserve." - Italian Proverbs

"The poor is hated by his neighbor, but the rich hath many friends." - Italian Proverbs

"There is never enough where nought is left." - Italian Proverbs

"There is no beard so well shaven but another barber will find something more to shave from it." - Italian Proverbs

"When wine sinks, words swim." - Italian Proverbs

"Who builds on the mob builds on sand." - Italian Proverbs

"Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own." - Italian Proverbs

"A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief, that can rise to delight, that, thank Heaven, nobody is reporting in this fashion on us." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"But it is said: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. The choice is yours: to go or wait.' 'And it is also said,' answered Frodo: 'Go not to the Elves for counsel for they will answer both no and yes.' 'Is it indeed?' laughed Gildor. 'Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes? Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel-blade, fair yet terrible. A swift stroke she dealt, skilled and deadly. The outstretched neck she clove asunder, and the hewn head fell like a stone. Backward she sprang as the huge shape crashed to ruin, vast wings outspread, crumpled on the earth; and with its fall the shadow passed away. A light fell about her, and her hair shone in the sunrise." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Dead men are not friends to living men, and give them no gifts." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Hammer and tongs! I am so torn between rage and joy, that if I do not burst, it will be a marvel!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"I am wise enough to know that there are some perils from which a man must flee." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"If this is victory, then our hands are too small to hold it." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"In this Music [the singing of the angels in harmony] the World was begun; for Iluvatar made visible the song of the Ainur,and they beheld it as a light in the darkness." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"It is not possible even at great length to pot The Lord of the Rings in a paragraph or two ? It was begun in 1937, and every part has been written many times. Hardly a word in its 600,000 or more has been unconsidered. And the placing, size, style, and contribution to the whole of the features, incidents, and chapters has been laboriously pondered. I do not say this in recommendation. It is, I feel, only too likely that I am deluded, lost in a web of vain imaginings of not much value to others ? in spite of the fact that a few readers have found it good, on the whole. What I intend to say is this: I cannot substantially alter the thing. I have finished it, is off my mind: the labor has been colossal: and it must stand or fall, practically as it is." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien