To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason.


H.L. Mencken

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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it make...
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Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
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He believed that there was need in the world for a class freed from the handicap of law and morality...
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It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though sh...
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Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.
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The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist...
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portug...
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American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless...
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Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world the...
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That's the good thing about it. Nothing counts except what's goin' on around you.
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ART happens every time we live in the spirit of the moment’s greatness" from Cinderella in Focus
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If religion is understanding God in the collective stories of life, then spirituality is finding God...
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When a mother elevates her communication, she naturally elevates the outcomes of her child's life si...
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The smaller the item of gratitude, the purer is the connection to our heart.
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Vulnerability along with a sense of humility are the purest forms of strength.
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Her smile makes me feel like a million little stars have just found their home in the gravitational ...
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Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
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A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
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There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
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A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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On one issue, at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
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Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think becau...
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation...
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Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the pr...
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Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-hor...
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A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
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One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly ...
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I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to ...
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Time stays, we go.
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A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.
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The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom...
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Archbishop -- A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
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A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who wi...
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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