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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

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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

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

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

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

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

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken

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

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

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

Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- 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 like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken

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

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

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

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

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
- Abraham Lincoln

If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
- The Buddha

Many a man fails as an original thinker
simply because his memory is too good.
- Nietzsche

The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion
to his commitment to excellence,
regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.
- Vince Lombardi

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal
of plain living and high thinking
the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants.
Man's happiness really lies in contentment.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

I submit to you that if a man hasn't
discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)

Non-violence requires a double faith,
faith in God and also faith in man.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

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

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted,
but beholds it as something
unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
- Albert Schweitzer

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives
and not in what he is able to receive.
- Albert Einstein

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

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

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

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

A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else.
- George Savile

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 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

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life,
he will lose his reverence for all of life.
- Albert Schweitzer

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
- John F. Kennedy

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

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

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.

Try not to become a man of success,
but rather try to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein

A man is what he thinks about all day long.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's good name is his best monument
- from an old churchyard at Lockerbie, Scotland

A man in debt is so far a slave.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.
It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction
devised by the ingenuity of man.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

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

No man is free who is not master of himself.
- Epictetus

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy.
What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
- Carl Jung

Behind an able man there are always other able men.
- Chinese proverb

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready
for his opportunity when it comes.
- Benjamin Disraeli

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- 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