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

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

Related topics: Cynical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smiling away your troubles requires
a clear conscience that harbors no insincerity.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

There is a higher court than courts of justice
and that is the court of conscience.
It supersedes all other courts.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Never do anything against conscience
even if the state demands it.
- Albert Einstein

The ultimate test of a man's conscience
may be his willingness to sacrifice something today
for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.
- Gaylord Nelson

In matters of conscience,
the law of the majority has no place.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The human voice can never reach the distance
that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
- B. C. Forbes

There are times, sir, when men of good conscience
cannot blindly follow orders.
- Captain Picard, STAR TREK: The Next Generation

'Tis the business of little minds to shrink,
but they whose heart is firm,
and whose conscience approves their conduct,
will pursue their principles unto death.
- Thomas Paine

The highest result of education is tolerance.
Long ago men fought and died for their faith;
but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, -
the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren
and their rights of conscience.
- Helen Keller

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life
in which chance has placed us,
but is always the result of a good conscience,
good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
- Thomas Jefferson

Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience,
independent will and creative imagination.
These give us the ultimate human freedom...
The power to choose, to respond, to change.
- Stephen Covey

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience:
this is the ideal life.
- Mark Twain

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that
it is better for hard words to be on paper
than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.
- Anne Frank

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves.
But deep down below the surface of the average conscience
a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.
- Carl Jung

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position
that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular;
but one must take it BECAUSE it is right.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold
is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
- Thomas Jefferson

There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.
- French Proverb

A satellite has no conscience.
- Edward R. Murrow

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself,
to resist invasions of it in the case of others:
or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
- Thomas Jefferson

One who breaks an unjust law
that conscience tells him is unjust,
and who willingly accepts
the penalty of imprisonment
in order to arouse the conscience
of the community over its injustice,
is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I submit that an individual who breaks the law
that conscience tells him is unjust
and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail
to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice,
is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

An individual who breaks a law that
conscience tells him is unjust,
and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment
in order to arouse the conscience
of the community over its injustice,
is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mother is the name for God
in the lips and hearts of little children.
- William Makepeace Thackeray

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort,
and without it nothing great was ever achieved.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we have no peace,
it is because we have forgotten
that we belong to each other.
- Mother Teresa

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
- Mother Teresa

So your father, or your mother,
never thought you were good enough - SO WHAT?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Necessity is the mother of invention.
- Proverb

A mother is not a person to lean on,
but a person to make leaning unnecessary.
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The most important thing a father
can do for his children
is to love their mother.
- Henry Ward Beecher

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.
- Mother Teresa

Even the rich are hungry for love,
for being cared for, for being wanted,
for having someone to call their own.
- Mother Teresa

Do not think that love,
in order to be genuine,
has to be extraordinary.
What we need is to love without getting tired.
- Mother Teresa

If we want a love message to be heard,
it has got to be sent out.
To keep a lamp burning,
we have to keep putting oil in it.
- Mother Teresa

In this life we cannot do great things.
We can only do small things with great love.
- Mother Teresa

The hunger for love is
much more difficult to remove
than the hunger for bread.
- Mother Teresa

If you want a love message to be heard,
it has got to be sent out.
To keep a lamp burning,
we have to keep putting oil in it.
- Mother Teresa

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor.
Do you know your next door neighbor?
- Mother Teresa

Every time you smile at someone,
it is an action of love,
a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
- Mother Teresa

Love is a fruit in season at all times,
and within reach of every hand.
- Mother Teresa

There was never a child so lovely
but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
- Mother Teresa

Spread love everywhere you go.
Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
- Mother Teresa

I think, at a child's birth,
if a mother could ask a fairy godmother
to endow it with the most useful gift,
that gift should be curiosity.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

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