For centuries, theologians have been explaining
by H. L. Mencken

For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken

Related topics: Cynical Religion

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

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

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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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken

For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- 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

Life is a constant oscillation
between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- H. L. Mencken

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken

The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken

The believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- H. L. Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken

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

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken

Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers,
looks around for a coffin.
- 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

Puritanism. The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- 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

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken

Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- 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

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- H. L. Mencken

The African is my brother but he is
my younger brother by several centuries.
- Albert Schweitzer

Interesting.
You Earth people glorify organized violence for 40 centuries,
but you imprison those who employ it privately.
- the character Spock in the television series Star Trek

I do not believe in the God of the theologians;
but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt.
- Thomas Edison

Footprints in the sands of time...
Where have you been?
Where are you going?
Why are you going there?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

For all sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these, "It might have been.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

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

My life has been filled with terrible misfortune;
most of which never happened.
- Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Sing like no one's listening,
love like you've never been hurt,
dance like nobody's watching,
and live like its heaven on earth.
- Mark Twain

Most of the important things in the world
have been accomplished by people
who have kept on trying
when there seemed to be no hope at all.
- Dale Carnegie

My experience has been that work is
almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth
until the hour of separation.
- Khalil Gibran

Re-examine all that you have been told...
dismiss that which insults your soul.
- Walt Whitman

It is never too late to become what you might have been.
- George Eliot

What work I have done I have done because it has been play.
If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.
- Mark Twain

An "always been" does not mean I must choose "what must be."
- Mary Anne Radmacher

I have always been regretting that
I was not as wise as the day I was born.
- Henry David Thoreau

Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
- Satchel Paige

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared
believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.
- Bruce Barton

Education is what survives when
what has been learned has been forgotten.
- B. F. Skinner

To have done anything just for money
is to have been truly idle.
- Henry David Thoreau

Love like you've never been hurt,
dance like no one is watching,
live as though heaven is on earth.
- Satchel Paige

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues
have never been discovered.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The highest thinkers of the ages,
the seers of the tribes and the nations,
have been optimists.
- Helen Keller

All life is change.
Release your attachment to the way things have been,
and wend your way joyfully
through life's unfolding majesty.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Grace has been defined as the outward expression
of the inward harmony of the soul.
- William Hazlitt

No written law has ever been more binding
than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
- Carrie Chapman Catt

Visualize your end result as having already been accomplished.
Let the image of your success play on the giant screen
in full color with surround sound -
so real you can smell and taste it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I accept everything that ever has been,
with no regrets, no resentments, and no call for vengeance.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The heart is always right -
if there's a question of choosing between the mind and the heart -
because mind is a creation of the society.
It has been educated.
You have been given it by the society, not by existence.
The heart is unpolluted.
- Osho

I have compassion for everyone who has ever
been a player upon the stage of my life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The world has always been in an uproar,
and it always will be.
Choose Peace. Choose to live with Peace.
Choose to interact peacefully with everyone -
especially those whose instinct is not to be peaceful.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

No person was ever honored for what he received.
Honor has been the reward for what he gave.
- Calvin Coolidge

Anger is a killing thing:
it kills the man who angers,
for each rage leaves him less than he had been before -
it takes something from him.
- Louis L'Amour

The wish for healing has always been half of health.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Calm provides clarity. Pause to consider
the gifts you have been given,
the difference you have made
and the direction in which you are headed.
- Anonymous

One never notices what has been done;
one can only see what remains to be done.
- Marie Curie

For as long as I can remember, I've been searching for something,
some reason why we're here. What are we doing here? Who are we?
If this is a chance to find out
even just a little part of that answer...
I don't know, I think it's worth a human life. Don't you?
- the Jodie Foster movie Contact (1997)

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea.
It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience,
something that never has been and never could
have been experienced by anyone else.
- Joseph Campbell

Life is too short, time is too precious,
and the stakes are too high
to dwell on what might have been.
- Hilary Clinton

Competition has been shown to be useful
up to a certain point and no further,
but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today,
begins where competition leaves off.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Like a Butterfly, I have been Reborn
with Bold Colors and Strong Wings.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Most of us believe that we have
been betrayed by someone outside of us -
in other words someone has done something to hurt us,
been dishonest or broken a promise made:
some trust in some concept was broken.
Indeed someone may have taken an action
that took only their needs into consideration,
they may have not followed through on a promise made,
and they may have not told you the truth.
But their actions have nothing to do with you
and have everything to do with them.
That's why no one can do anything TO you.
They can take actions that involve you that you may not like -
according to your point of view.
But you are not a victim, no way, no how.
- Sheri Rosenthal

One may as well dam for water tanks
the people's cathedrals and churches,
for no holier temple has ever
been consecrated by the heart of man.
- John Muir

Lovers who have been left, lose confidence and become afraid.
They learn to leave relationships first.
The broken hearted become the heart breakers.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie