H. L. Mencken Quotes
The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
Quotes to Explore
-
The greatest mathematicians, as Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss, always united theory and applications in equal measure.
-
I try to give the appearance that I have it all together and that I know what I'm talking about, but at the end of the day, I think I might be full of crap.
-
Perhaps things are not things but words: metaphors, words for other things.
-
Food production has affected the environment more than any other activity humans have engaged in. Humanity devotes more land to food production than anything else - roughly a third of the surface area of the earth, much of which was once forest but has been converted by humans into farms or grazing lands.
-
In motorsports we work in the grey areas a lot. You're trying to find where the holes are in the rule book.
-
I'm very involved with kids because after being a teacher for seven years, I just can't stop loving the kids. I am a teacher forever.
-
I have a carbohydrate and protein-rich diet. For breakfast, I typically have two slices of bread with butter or jam, four to five eggs - boiled or fried - a few bananas and a glass of milk.
-
I try to avoid conflict. I don't want people to be unhappy.
-
Oh, it is quite possible that none of us in 'Downton' will ever again get the ratings this has had. But from a career point of view, it has opened so many doors.
-
When I'm doing my own makeup, I just stick to a bit of black liner, some blush and a nude glossy lip.
-
The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly.
-
I do not know You, God, because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.
-
I'm obsessed with subtexts. I love that we often don't say what we feel. That gap between the two. I like it when actors reveal a lot without having to say it.
-
There's an awareness of fashion in this country, and it's not limited to gay people.
-
You do silly things for love sometimes and not-so-smart things for love.
-
In any country there must be people who have to die. They are the sacrifices any nation has to make to achieve law and order.
-
I didn't know that I could do a talk show. I didn't know that we could bring variety to daytime. I didn't know that people wanted to see singing, and dancing and comedy in the morning.
-
And I like to convey my feelings, my emotions, my experience, the information I have to public use, public opinion.
-
One of the few certainties in life is that persons of certainty should certainly be avoided.
-
The trick to acting is not to show off, it's to think the thoughts of the character.
-
I told God, 'I don't want a man. I don't want more gold albums. The only thing I want is the love, friendship, and presence of my mother.' And God gave it to me.
-
Most writers battle with periods of being blocked; it's almost an occupational hazard. But in the writing of his last and greatest novel, 'A Passage to India,' E. M. Forster got stuck for nine years.
-
There are very few things I would love to do other than a life of writing, and I think being a singer-songwriter and being an anthropologist are the two other things I can imagine doing.
-
The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
