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The objection to Puritans is not that
they try to make us think as they do,
but that they try to make us do as they think.
- H. L. Mencken
Related topics: Cynical Religion
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie.
I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave.
And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
- H.L. Mencken
We must respect the other fellow's religion,
but only in the sense and to the extent
that we respect his theory that
his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
- H. L. Mencken
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person
to reconcile himself to the idea that
after all God will not help him
- H. L. Mencken
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- H. L. Mencken
Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- H. L. Mencken
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken
For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H.L. Mencken
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken
For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken
The believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- H. L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
(and hence clamorous to be led to safety)
by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins,
all of them imaginary.
- H. L. Mencken
The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken
The worst government is often the most moral.
One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane.
But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
- H. L. Mencken
Puritanism. The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers,
looks around for a coffin.
- H. L. Mencken
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband
a month before she marries him
and what she thinks of him a year afterward,
and you will have the truth about him.
- H. L. Mencken
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken
Life is a constant oscillation
between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- H. L. Mencken
Morality is the theory that every human act
must be either right or wrong,
and that 99 % of them are wrong.
- H. L. Mencken
The essence of life is not in
the great victories and grand failures,
but in the simple joys.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The world is perfect. It's a mess.
It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives.
- Joseph Campbell
You will not be punished for your anger,
you will be punished by your anger.
- The Buddha
I do not need anyone's permission to be my true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
- Marianne Williamson
The mind is not a vessel to be filled
but a fire to be kindled.
- Plutarch
Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.
- Khalil Gibran
I am not afraid of storms
for I am learning how to sail my ship.
- Louisa May Alcott
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
- Rabindranath Tagore
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
- Lao Tzu
Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.
- Rabindranath Tagore
To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu
Treat those who are good with goodness,
and also treat those who are not good with goodness.
Thus goodness is attained.
Be honest to those who are honest,
and be also honest to those who are not honest.
Thus honesty is attained.
- Lao Tzu
Everything has beauty,
but not everyone sees it.
- Confucius
Self-respect is not a function of size, age, or wealth.
Breathe deep, sing loud and sweet,
"I am me, I am unique, I am magnificent."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore
Lord, grant that I might not so much
seek to be loved as to love.
- St. Francis of Assisi
"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly,
"one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
- Hans Christian Andersen
A good traveler has no fixed plans,
and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu
The beauty does not live out there;
the beauty's in my eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson
We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past,
but by the love we're not extending in the present.
- Marianne Williamson
One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu
Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition,
is not only a waste of energy
but the worst habit you could possibly have.
- Dale Carnegie
To the people who love you,
you are beautiful already.
This is not because they're
blind to your shortcomings
but because they so clearly see your soul.
- Victoria Moran
It's not the size of the dog in the fight,
it's the size of the fight in the dog.
- Mark Twain
Sometimes we need the fog to remind ourselves
that all of life is not black and white.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.
- Edmund Hillary
Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession
as they torment us with their loss.
- Epicurus
Treat the earth well.
It was not given to you by your parents,
it was loaned to you by your children.
We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,
we borrow it from our Children.
- Native American traditional
Am I not destroying my enemies
when I make friends of them?
- Abraham Lincoln
A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
It sings because it has a song.
- Chinese Proverb
Life is NOT "Supposed to be Fair."
Know that there is no single way that life is "supposed" to be.
Demanding that life meet our expectations
is a sure fire recipe for a miserable existence.
Life is a game with no rules.
Life just happens to us regardless of our best intentions.
Our only path to happiness lies in being open
to receiving whatever life throws at us -
with Gratitude. Have NO Expectations of life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A ship in harbor is safe -
but that is not what ships are for.
- John A. Shedd
One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.
If we did not sometimes taste of adversity,
prosperity would not be so welcome.
- Anne Bradstreet
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
- Henry David Thoreau
Everything is a miracle,
not just the beautiful and lovely things.
- Anonymous
The possession of knowledge does not
kill the sense of wonder and mystery.
There is always more mystery.
- Anais Nin
Life is not supposed to be fair.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Do not blame the thistle that you see no beauty.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Hold on... Joyfully.
Holding-on does not have to be
a desperate teeth-gritting kind of holding-on.
Holding-on can be a joyful
"this is just the nature of Life,
so I may as well enjoy it"
kind of holding-on.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations.
I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty,
believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
- Louisa May Alcott
When dealing with people, remember you are
not dealing with creatures of logic,
but creatures of emotion.
- Dale Carnegie
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
- Oscar Wilde
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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