H. L. Mencken Quotes

Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it; moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories

H. L. Mencken

• Drama
• Gay
• Golf

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Quotes to Explore

• We need more people working in the publishing industry itself who are people of colour.

  

  Malorie Blackman
  • People
  • Working
  • Need

• I love diving into different skins, skins that make me feel deep emotions.

  

  Aaron Paul
  • Feel
  • Emotions
  • Make

• When I was very little my mother said I used to draw in the air with my fingers. I needed a pencil. Once I could hold one, I have drawn every day since.

  

  Oscar Niemeyer
  • Mother
  • Day
  • Air

• I think there's plenty of evidence that we need to stop spewing so much carbon into the air, that we're contributing to climate change and that we ought to look for alternatives.

  

  Lamar Alexander
  • Change
  • Stop
  • Air

• A lot of people have asked me whether I am a cynic or take a cynical view of politics and are often surprised when I say that I consider myself an optimist, but an optimist dressed in the robes of a realist.

  

  Beau Willimon
  • Politics
  • Realist
  • Optimist

• My whole working philosophy is that the only stable happiness for mankind is that it shall live married in blessed union to woman-kind - intimacy, physical and psychical between a man and his wife. I wish to add that my state of bliss is by no means perfect.

  

  D. H. Lawrence
  • Live
  • Man
  • Perfect

• Being attractive, it's not something I do consciously. It's incredibly flattering that people think I appeal to women. But that was a gift from my parents.

  

  Ioan Gruffudd
  • People
  • Women
  • Parents

• You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.

  

  Og Mandino
  • Home
  • Know
  • Events

• I feel very competitive with Robert Morse off-set. We often duke it out. He always wins.

  

  Aaron Staton
  • Always
  • Feel
  • Competitive

• If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those moments when I have felt as if the sentences, dreams, and pages that have made me so ecstatically happy have not come from my own imagination - that another power has found them and generously presented them to me.

  

  Orhan Pamuk
  • Life
  • Power
  • Happy

• When someone doesn't react to changes, the changes turn against him.

  

  Yair Lapid
  • Changes
  • Him
  • Turn

• Not many of my friends I had from college are playing in this league. Everybody knows it's a privilege, so you definitely don't knock it because you never know where you may end up.

  

  Calvin Johnson
  • Up
  • May
  • Friends

• Tile is going to the landfill by the metric ton. All we have to do it gather it up, glue it down to the floor and grout it. Then you have a tile floor, and not just any tile floor: it's a mosaic of your own choosing.

  

  Dan Phillips
  • Up
  • You
  • Down

• The doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of Jesus, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever stirred and changed human thought.

  

  H. G. Wells
  • Jesus
  • Heaven
  • Teacher

• Sometimes, how you ingest this idea of masculinity as projected onto you by the world could be the difference of life and death.

  

  Barry Jenkins
  • Life
  • World
  • Death

• Americans spend more money on Botox, face lifts and tummy tucks than on the age-old scourges of polio, small pox and malaria.

  

  Victor Davis Hanson
  • Money
  • Age
  • Small

• I left Edinburgh to follow the London punk scene in 1978, singing and playing guitar in various bands. My income was sporadic, so I did anything to eke out some kind of subsistence - laying down slabs, working as a kitchen porter.

  

  Irvine Welsh
  • Singing
  • Guitar
  • Kitchen

• If I've been indulging in rich foods, a cleanse is a wonderful way to hit the reset button.

  

  Salma Hayek
  • Way
  • Rich
  • Button

• My next book is Scene by Scene: as Seen by Fay Wray. It'll be about different incidents. Just my feelings about quite a few people. Attitudes. My thoughts about the universe and simple things like that.

  

  Fay Wray
  • People
  • Different
  • Book

• In the attempt to make scientific discoveries, every problem is an opportunity — and the more difficult the problem, the greater will be the importance of its solution.

  

  E. O. Wilson
  • Opportunity

• There are terrible things going on in the world, but I am not going to force them down everyone's throats.

  

  Sam Taylor-Johnson
  • World
  • Terrible
  • Throats

• For an act may be wrong judged purely by itself, but when the motive that prompted the act is understood, it is construed differently. I lay it down as an axiom, that only that is criminal in the sight of God where crime is meditated.

  

  Elizabeth Keckley
  • God
  • Crime
  • Judged

• I think auditions are set up for failure because they're not really the set experience. There's no time to develop the character. You're just looking at someone... if someone's really good in an audition, sometimes they're not good in the film. It's something you learn when you're doing short films. It's the same way that some people do well at taking tests and some people don't. But when you're on a long-term filmmaking process it's a completely different feeling.

  

  Cary Fukunaga
  • Different
  • Character
  • Sometimes

• Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it; moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • Drama
  • Gay
  • Golf