Puritanism. The haunting fear that
by H. L. Mencken

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know that the greatest fear is fear of the unknown.
Seek to meet the unknown with courage and a sense of adventure.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The greatest mistake you can make in life
is to be continually fearing you will make one.
- Elbert Hubbard

Tell your heart that the fear of suffering
is worse than the suffering itself.
- Paulo Coelho

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
- Joseph Campbell

Our actions are constrained by fear of reprisal,
but our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You can conquer almost any fear
if you will only make up your mind to do so.
For remember, fear doesn't exist
anywhere except in the mind.
- Dale Carnegie

The way to develop self-confidence
is to do the thing you fear
and get a record of successful experiences behind you.
- William Jennings Bryan

The inherent nature of life is constant change.
To fear change is to fear life itself.
- 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 only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Fear cannot be banished, but it can be calm and without panic;
it can be mitigated by reason and evaluation.
- Vannevar Bush

Where fear is, happiness is not.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.
- Babe Ruth

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Misunderstanding arising from ignorance breeds fear,
and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace.
- Lester B. Pearson

Poverty with security is better than plenty
in the midst of fear and uncertainty.
- Aesop

Choose what lies in the shadows to be a matter
for discovery and adventure, rather than fear.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another
as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
- Thomas Jefferson

I gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience
in which I must stop and look fear in the face.
I say to myself, I've lived through this
and can take the next thing that comes along.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.
- George Washington

The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy
is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet,
alone with the heavens, nature and God.
Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.
- Anne Frank

The fear of death follows from the fear of life.
A man who lives fully, is prepared to die at any time.
- Mark Twain

If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you are not afraid of dying,
there is nothing you cannot achieve.
- Lao Tzu

The best way to gain self-confidence
is to do what you are afraid to do.
- Anonymous

If you look into your own heart,
and you find nothing wrong there,
what is there to worry about?
What is there to fear?
- Confucius

Not everything that casts a long shadow is to be feared.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

FEAR is an acronym in the English language
for "False Evidence Appearing Real."
- Neale Donald Walsch

To live a creative life
we must lose our fear of being wrong.
- Joseph Chilton Pearce

A mentality of scarcity - of lack -
is the natural consequence of
viewing the world through eyes of fear.
In contrast, when the world is viewed
through eyes of love,
the future becomes unlimited.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers
of acting and reasoning as fear.
- Edmund Burke

The River of Life has no meaning,
no good, no bad, no better, no worse,
no love, no hate, no fear, no anger, no joy.
The River of Life has no judgment, no expectation.
The River of Life just IS.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Our deepest fears are like dragons
guarding our deepest treasure.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

If we let things terrify us,
life will not be worth living.
- Seneca

The most painful and debilitating fear is fear of the unknown.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

In this world there is always danger
for those who are afraid of it.
- George Bernard Shaw

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation
can be trusted to act humanely
or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
- Bertrand Russell

It is idle to dread what you cannot avoid.
- Publilius Syrus

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
- Albert Camus

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid
as getting to know how enormously much
he is capable of doing and becoming.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Inaction breeds doubt and fear.
Action breeds confidence and courage.
If you want to conquer fear,
do not sit home and think about it.
Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow,
it only saps today of its joy.
- Leo Buscaglia

Smell the smells, feel the fear,
and smile at the incoherent way
life runs us in circles
while inscribing the real lessons
in a corner of the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When I hear music, I fear no danger.
I am invulnerable. I see no foe.
I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
- Henry David Thoreau

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