Quote #91
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
More from H. L. Mencken
- Do [English Teachers] believe that the aim of teaching English is to increase the exact and beautiful use of the language? Or that it is to…
- A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
- Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is rig…
- Mencken's [very widely attributed, as yet unsourced] pat response to all angry letters:
- Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
- A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromise…
- The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is…
- A sandwich made up of two thick and tasteless chunks of Kriegsbrot with a couple of excellent sardines between.