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The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.


H.L. Mencken

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The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H. L. MENCKEN The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H L MENCKEN The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have to be seen to be believed.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughou...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss, ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in th...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something e...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts an...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Grief is the price we pay for love.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a nobl...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Chr...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II For many, Christmas is also a time for coming together. But for others, service will come first.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses w...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your s...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are g...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the man...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II These wretched babies don't come until they are ready.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and o...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II We'll sort of get over the marriage first and then maybe look at the kids. But obviously we want...
PRINCE WILLIAM Family is the most important thing in the world.
PRINCESS DIANA You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I ...
CATHERINE THE GREAT With the right help, children have a good chance of overcoming their issues while they are still you...
KATE MIDDLETON As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.
KING SOLOMON I don't mind a big fascinator. I think there is more scope for artwork in a fascinator rather th...
ZARA PHILLIPS I was always told from the hat-makers that you should have your hair up because it shows the hat mor...
ZARA PHILLIPS I don't think I'll still be riding at 40. There are a couple of people who are still riding ...
ZARA PHILLIPS My dad's not a big talker.
ZARA PHILLIPS My dad can be pretty critical sometimes.
ZARA PHILLIPS I'd love to have kids, but not at the moment.
ZARA PHILLIPS You cannot make horses 'safe.'
ZARA PHILLIPS Virtually everything that gets printed about me is wrong anyway, so it doesn't really matter wha...
ZARA PHILLIPS It's stupid to say that I don't like being in the public eye, but I don't like doing stu...
ZARA PHILLIPS I'm an affectionate person.
ZARA PHILLIPS People still text me to say that there is something about me in the paper, and what really annoys me...
ZARA PHILLIPS Sometimes people will come up in the street and say: 'My daughter loves you, will you sign an au...
ZARA PHILLIPS Taking part in an Olympics on home ground is something you dream about.
ZARA PHILLIPS My brother and I have been able to get on and have been very lucky to do things with our family that...
ZARA PHILLIPS I don't think about the media.
ZARA PHILLIPS I love the sport and being competitive.
ZARA PHILLIPS The horses are all characters, all personalities. Some you get along with, some you don't, some ...
ZARA PHILLIPS I hate having my picture taken.
ZARA PHILLIPS Unfortunately in sport it's either good or bad. You've got to take the highs and the lows.
ZARA PHILLIPS My mother is massively into sailing, so we always had Musto clothes, and it went on from there, real...
ZARA PHILLIPS The senior members of the royal family work very hard and I don't think people quite realise tha...
ZARA PHILLIPS In our sport you're very lucky to find a horse of a lifetime and I found mine relatively early. ...
ZARA PHILLIPS I don't have a stylist, and I do most of my shopping online, just because it's easier. I don...
ZARA PHILLIPS I think Facebook's dangerous. So many people I know get into trouble with Facebook... I'd ra...
ZARA PHILLIPS I'm not a princess anyway so I find that quite weird to be labelled as one.
ZARA PHILLIPS Smoking is hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs.
KING JAMES I My dear mamma is quite right when she says that we must lay down principles and not depart from them...
MARIE ANTOINETTE I never make a trip to the United States without visiting a supermarket. To me they are more fascina...
WALLIS SIMPSON PS: It's all gossip about the prince. I'm not in the habit of taking my girlfriends' bea...
WALLIS SIMPSON I am so anxious for you not to abdicate and I think the fact that you do is going to put me in the w...
WALLIS SIMPSON I hate this place. I shall hate it to my grave.
WALLIS SIMPSON I look a hundred and weigh 110 - you won't love me when you see the wreck England has made me.
WALLIS SIMPSON A woman's life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compe...
WALLIS SIMPSON Never explain, never complain.
WALLIS SIMPSON You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance.
WALLIS SIMPSON I have always had the courage for the new things that life sometimes offers.
WALLIS SIMPSON For a gallant spirit there can never be defeat.
WALLIS SIMPSON Forgive me for not writing but this man is exhausting.
WALLIS SIMPSON You can never be too rich or too thin.
WALLIS SIMPSON A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
KING SOLOMON It seems to me that man is made to act rather than to know: the principles of things escape our most...
FREDERICK THE GREAT Addiction is a hugely complex and destructive disease, and its impact can be simply devastating. All...
KATE MIDDLETON There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.
MARIE ANTOINETTE I have seen all, I have heard all, I have forgotten all.
MARIE ANTOINETTE I think change needs to be egoless. It's not about my leaving my fingerprints or a legacy. It...
QUEEN RANIA OF JORDAN We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.
QUEEN VICTORIA I can make a lord, but only God can make a gentleman.
KING JAMES I I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.
CHARLES V I feel very, very lucky that George has got a little sister.
KATE MIDDLETON It would be doing me great injustice to think that I have any feeling of indifference to my country;...
MARIE ANTOINETTE I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.
AUGUSTUS A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in.
FREDERICK THE GREAT Nothing is more useless in developing a nation's economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road...
HUSSEIN OF JORDAN It is necessary to try to pass one's self always; this occupation ought to last as long as life.
QUEEN CHRISTINA There's nothing like a jolly good disaster to get people to start doing something.
PRINCE CHARLES We shouldn't judge people through the prism of our own stereotypes.
QUEEN RANIA OF JORDAN I don't even know how to use a parking meter, let alone a phone box.
PRINCESS DIANA What must it be like for a little boy to read that daddy never loved mummy?
PRINCESS DIANA The kindness and affection from the public have carried me through some of the most difficult period...
PRINCESS DIANA People think that at the end of the day a man is the only answer. Actually, a fulfilling job is bett...
PRINCESS DIANA

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H.L. MENCKEN The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led t...
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H.L. MENCKEN Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
H.L. MENCKEN Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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H.L. MENCKEN Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a time wh...
H.L. MENCKEN The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge...
H.L. MENCKEN One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
H.L. MENCKEN If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some...
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H.L. MENCKEN The opera…is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
H.L. MENCKEN When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivabl...
H.L. MENCKEN Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every h...
H.L. MENCKEN The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, wit...
H.L. MENCKEN I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and gre...
H.L. MENCKEN Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
H.L. MENCKEN He believed that there was need in the world for a class freed from the handicap of law and morality...
H.L. MENCKEN When we consider the fact that the spectroscope has enabled us to make a chemical analysis of the su...
H.L. MENCKEN He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, f...
H.L. MENCKEN In the superman Nietzsche gave the world a conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. But t...
H.L. MENCKEN Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable of any such confusion o...
H.L. MENCKEN Yet the same thing happens to the notions of morality. They are devised, at the start, as measures o...
H.L. MENCKEN Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
H.L. MENCKEN Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H.L. MENCKEN The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the ...
H.L. MENCKEN The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the es...
H.L. MENCKEN It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though sh...
H.L. MENCKEN Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
H.L. MENCKEN I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
H.L. MENCKEN Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and ha...
H.L. MENCKEN No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agen...
H.L. MENCKEN You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.
H.L. MENCKEN He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; ...
H.L. MENCKEN There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
H.L. MENCKEN the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.
H.L. MENCKEN Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sak...
H.L. MENCKEN Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be r...
H.L. MENCKEN Under democracy one party always devotes it's chief energies to prove that the other party is unfit ...
H.L. MENCKEN The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist...
H.L. MENCKEN A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H.L. MENCKEN There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portug...
H.L. MENCKEN American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless...
H.L. MENCKEN Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world the...
H.L. MENCKEN That's the good thing about it. Nothing counts except what's goin' on around you.
H.L. DAVIS You're kind and patient and honorable, and yes, maybe those aren't flashy, magical, extraordinary tr...
H.L. BURKE A peaceful feeling: A happy harmony or symphony of all of our character pieces working in powerful u...
H.L. BALCOMB ART happens every time we live in the spirit of the moment’s greatness" from Cinderella in Focus
H.L. BALCOMB If religion is understanding God in the collective stories of life, then spirituality is finding God...
H.L. BALCOMB When a mother elevates her communication, she naturally elevates the outcomes of her child's life si...
H.L. BALCOMB The smaller the item of gratitude, the purer is the connection to our heart.
H.L. BALCOMB Vulnerability along with a sense of humility are the purest forms of strength.
H.L. BALCOMB Her smile makes me feel like a million little stars have just found their home in the gravitational ...
H.L. BALCOMB We need to be wise consumers of information in an age of artificially created reality, written by pr...
H.L. WEGLEY As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner ...
HL MENCKEN Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
H. L. MENCKEN A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
H. L. MENCKEN There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
H. L. MENCKEN Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
H. L. MENCKEN For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. MENCKEN The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
H. L. MENCKEN A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H. L. MENCKEN A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H. L. MENCKEN Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin sl...
H. L. MENCKEN Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
H. L. MENCKEN On one issue, at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
H. L. MENCKEN Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think becau...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation...
H. L. MENCKEN Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the pr...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-hor...
H. L. MENCKEN A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
H. L. MENCKEN One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly ...
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 ...
H. L. MENCKEN Time stays, we go.
H. L. MENCKEN A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.
H. L. MENCKEN The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom...
H. L. MENCKEN Archbishop -- A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. MENCKEN A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who wi...
H. L. MENCKEN All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will b...
H. L. MENCKEN The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surm...
H. L. MENCKEN The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are wo...
H. L. MENCKEN There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
H. L. MENCKEN There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as ...
H. L. MENCKEN War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr...
H. L. MENCKEN Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had an...
H. L. MENCKEN Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another.
H. L. MENCKEN To be in love is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia.
H. L. MENCKEN I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys...
H. L. MENCKEN I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
H. L. MENCKEN If I ever marry it will be on a sudden impulse, as a man shoots himself.
H. L. MENCKEN Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's ...
H. L. MENCKEN The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and hence clamorous to be led t...
H. L. MENCKEN We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense that we respect his theory that ...
H. L. MENCKEN It is a sin to believe in the evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
H. L. MENCKEN Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party...
H. L. MENCKEN We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
H. L. MENCKEN No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a c...
H. L. MENCKEN School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of du...
H. L. MENCKEN Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
H. L. MENCKEN The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all: it is simply to reduce as many in...
H. L. MENCKEN The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. B...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the ...
H. L. MENCKEN It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
H. L. MENCKEN Fame: an embalmer trembling with stage fright.
H. L. MENCKEN A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice s...
H. L. MENCKEN One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will...
H. L. MENCKEN The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.
H. L. MENCKEN Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her hea...
H. L. MENCKEN A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regar...
H. L. MENCKEN Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later, for another thing, th...
H. L. MENCKEN Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
H. L. MENCKEN Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
H. L. MENCKEN Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't, they'd be married too.
H. L. MENCKEN It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards ce...
H. L. MENCKEN To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better...
H. L. MENCKEN The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
H. L. MENCKEN Time is the great equalizer in the field of morals.
H. L. MENCKEN The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act...
H. L. MENCKEN Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are ...
H. L. MENCKEN Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he...
H. L. MENCKEN The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is t...
H. L. MENCKEN Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in l...
H. L. MENCKEN