A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers,
by H. L. Mencken

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

Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- 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

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- 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

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

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

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

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

The believer's ray of light is the cynic's sunburn.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything
and the value of nothing.
- Oscar Wilde

Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde

If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller

Great and good are seldom the same man.
- Winston Churchill

It is not the man who has too little,
but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Early to bed and early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin

When I look back on all these worries,
I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed
that he had had a lot of trouble in his life,
most of which had never happened.
- Winston Churchill

The wise man looks back into the past,
and does not grieve over what is far off,
nor rejoice over what is near;
for he knows that time is without end.
- Lao Tzu

The wise man looks into space,
and does not regard the small as too little,
nor the great as too much;
for he knows that there is no limit to dimensions.
- Lao Tzu

Take a chance! All life is a chance.
The man who goes farthest is generally
the one who is willing to do and dare.
- Dale Carnegie

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands
in moments of comfort and convenience,
but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

During the first period of a man's life
the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
- Soren Kierkegaard

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
- Naguib Mahfouz

The man who is successful is the man who is useful.
- Bourke Cockran

There is no limit to what a man can do
or where he can go,
if he doesn't mind who gets the credit.
- Robert Woodruff

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

There are other measures of self-respect for a man,
than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Science gives man knowledge, which is power;
religion gives man wisdom, which is control.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man is a success if he gets up in
the morning and gets to bed at night,
and in between he does what he wants to do.
- Bob Dylan

Nothing can stop the man with the right
mental attitude from achieving his goal;
nothing on earth can help the man
with the wrong mental attitude.
- Thomas Jefferson

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man.
Everything that exists has brought
with it its own peculiar lesson.
- Orison Swett Marden

To measure the man, measure his heart.
- Malcolm S. Forbes

Intent is what can make a man succeed
when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated.
- Carlos Castaneda

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live
that his happiness shall depend
as little as possible on external things.
- Epictetus

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
the wise grows it under his feet.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer

A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
- Seneca

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.
- Yiddish Proverb

A great secret of success is to go through life
as a man who never gets used up.
- Albert Schweitzer

Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding
and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A great man is always willing to be little.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer

If a man does not know what port he is steering for,
no wind is favorable to him.
- Seneca

A man can fail many times,
but he isn't a failure until
he begins to blame somebody else.
- John Burroughs

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
- Oscar Wilde

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