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.

H. L. Mencken

• God
• Art
• Bad
• True
• Nature
• Blue
• Proof

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Quotes to Explore

• The greatest mathematicians, as Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss, always united theory and applications in equal measure.

  

  Felix Klein
  • Always
  • Greatest
  • Equal

• 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.

  

  Laura Benanti
  • Together
  • Day
  • End

• Perhaps things are not things but words: metaphors, words for other things.

  

  Octavio Paz
  • Words
  • Things
  • Other

• 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.

  

  Ramez Naam
  • Earth
  • Food
  • Environment

• My mom taught me from a young age to give back and volunteer any chance you get. It was something that I knew, if I made the NFL, I would financially have the ability to do.

  

  J. J. Watt
  • Age
  • Mom
  • Chance

• I do not think that having children - I have three teenagers - keeps you young. The reverse. It thrusts you into a full-frontal confrontation with your own all-too-obvious maturity.

  

  Rachel Johnson
  • Children
  • Think
  • Maturity

• In motorsports we work in the grey areas a lot. You're trying to find where the holes are in the rule book.

  

  Danica Patrick
  • Work
  • Trying
  • 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.

  

  Yolanda Adams
  • Kids
  • Teacher
  • Involved

• 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.

  

  Vijender Singh
  • Breakfast
  • Bread
  • Diet

• I try to avoid conflict. I don't want people to be unhappy.

  

  Viggo Mortensen
  • People
  • Conflict
  • 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.

  

  Dan Stevens
  • Career
  • View
  • Doors

• When I'm doing my own makeup, I just stick to a bit of black liner, some blush and a nude glossy lip.

  

  Abbey Clancy
  • Black
  • Doing
  • Makeup

• I invented animals and birds – I had about two dozen. After working on them for six months, I sat down and just for fun wrote two dozen poems to accompany the drawings. It was for no one to every see, but a friend sent me in to an editor.

  

  Jack Prelutsky
  • Fun
  • Friend
  • Working

• 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.

  

  T. E. Lawrence
  • World
  • Present
  • Poverty

• I do not know You, God, because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.

  

  Flannery O'Connor
  • God
  • Help
  • Push

• The sleeplessness is proven; it eradicates your memory.

  

  Gaby Hoffmann
  • Memory
  • Your
  • Proven

• 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.

  

  Felicity Jones
  • Love
  • Feel
  • Say

• There's an awareness of fashion in this country, and it's not limited to gay people.

  

  Calvin Klein
  • People
  • Country
  • Fashion

• Anyone who wants to understand human nature, the interaction between brain and culture, between evolution and society, has to take a close look at the role that music has held in the lives of humans.

  

  Daniel Levitin
  • Music
  • Nature
  • Society

• It is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up.

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • Up
  • Time
  • Giving

• The chandelier suddenly started to sway

  

  Carolyn Keene
  • Sway
  • Chandelier

• I feel like we cheated... because you read about these other directors, just like, 'Damn! They paid dues for 10 years before they got to get behind the camera.' We cheated because technology was in the right place at the right time, and we were alive at the right age at the right time for us to take advantage of that.

  

  Freddie Wong
  • Time
  • Age
  • Technology

• 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.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • God
  • Art
  • Bad