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Tag: Henry Louis Mencken

April Fool’s Day Quotes

April Fool’s Day is here. Let’s celebrate it with some useful April Fool’s Day Quotes.

April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four. ~Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894

April fool, n. The March fool with another month added to his folly. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. ~Chinese Proverb

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee,
And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me. ~Robert Frost, “Cluster of Faith,” 1962

He who is born a fool is never cured. ~Proverb

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed. ~Mark Twain

If every fool wore a crown, we should all be kings. ~Welsh Proverb

I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it. ~Jack Handey

We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance. ~Japanese Proverb

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. ~Abraham Lincoln

Even the gods love jokes. ~Plato

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. ~Will Rogers

A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark. ~Henry Louis Mencken

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. ~Douglas Adams

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor. ~Max Eastman

Don’t give cherries to pigs or advice to fools. ~Irish Proverb

A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself. ~Clifton Paul Fadiman

It is better to weep with wise men than to laugh with fools. ~Spanish Proverb

I have great faith in fools – self-confidence, my friends call it. ~Edgar Allan Poe

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded. ~George Orwell

Men reach their sexual peak at eighteen. Women reach theirs at thirty-five. Do you get the feeling that God is playing a practical joke? ~Rita Rudner

Suppose the world were only one of God’s jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one? ~George Bernard Shaw

Real friends are those who, when you feel you’ve made a fool of yourself, don’t feel you’ve done a permanent job. ~Author Unknown

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. “Oh, no,” I said. “Disneyland burned down.” He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late. ~Jack Handey

Famous People Quotes #10

“The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.” – George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

“Silence is argument carried out by other means.” – Ernesto”Che”Guevara (1928-1967)

“Well done is better than well said.” – Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

“The average person thinks he isn’t.” – Father Larry Lorenzoni

“Heav’n hath no rage like love to hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.” – William Congreve (1670-1729)

“A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.” – Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

“Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.” – Lewis Perelman

“Dogma is the sacrifice of wisdom to consistency.” – Lewis Perelman

“Sometimes it is not enough to do our best; we must do what is required.” – Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” – Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

“There is a country in Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal.” – Sigfried Hulzer

“Ask her to wait a moment – I am almost done.” – Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), while working, when informed that his wife is dying

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943

“I think it would be a good idea.” – Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

“I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat!” – Will Rogers (1879-1935)

“If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?” – Will Rogers (1879-1935)

“The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.” – Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

“Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions – it only guarantees equality of opportunity.” – Irving Kristol

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.” – A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith‘s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” – H. M. Warner (1881-1958), founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” – Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” – Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood.” – General George S. Patton (1885-1945)

“After I’m dead I’d rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.” – Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)

“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” – Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

“Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.” – last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)

“The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)

“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.” – Tom Clancy

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.” – Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), “The Prince”

“Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.” – Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

“The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.” – Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live

“We’re going to turn this team around 360 degrees.” – Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks

“Half this game is ninety percent mental.” – Yogi Berra

“There is only one nature – the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole.” – Bill Wulf

“There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” – Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” – Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“Write drunk; edit sober.” – Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

“I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.” – Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

“Love is friendship set on fire.” – Jeremy Taylor

“God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time.” – Robin Williams, commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky affair

“My occupation now, I suppose, is jail inmate.” – Unibomber Theodore Kaczynski, when asked in court what his current profession was

“Woman was God’s second mistake.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

“This isn’t right, this isn’t even wrong.” – Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), upon reading a young physicist’s paper

“For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.” – Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

“Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.” – Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” – Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

“Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies.” – Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.

“Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.” – Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

“He would make a lovely corpse.” – Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb

“I worship the quicksand he walks in.” – Art Buchwald

“Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” – Paul Valery (1871-1945)

“We are not retreating – we are advancing in another Direction.” – General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)

“If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?” – Seymour Cray (1925-1996), father of supercomputing

“#3 pencils and quadrille pads.” – Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer; he also recommended using the back side of the pages so that the grid lines were not so dominant.

“Interesting – I use a Mac to help me design the next Cray.” – Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when he was told that Apple Inc. had recently bought a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac.

“Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis.” – Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.

“I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.” – Francois-Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“The truth is more important than the facts.” – Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” – Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)

“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” – Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Honesty Quotes

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. ~Henry Louis Mencken, A Little Book in C Major, 1916

If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything. ~Mark Twain

Who lies for you will lie against you. ~Bosnian Proverb

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar. ~Abraham Lincoln

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world. ~Thomas Carlyle

A half truth is a whole lie. ~Yiddish Proverb

A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie. ~Charles Edward Montague, Disenchantment

Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind. ~Austin O’Malley

A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. ~William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” Poems from the Pickering Manuscript

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold. ~Aristotle

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie: A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby. ~George Herbert

With lies you may get ahead in the world – but you can never go back. ~Russian proverb

Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain’t lawful tender for a loaf of bread. ~Josh Billings

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff. ~Ambrose Bierce

A lie has speed, but truth has endurance. ~Edgar J. Mohn

When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback. ~Bill Copeland

Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it. ~Mark Twain

Honesty is never seen sitting astride the fence. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911

A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future. ~Author Unknown

We tell lies when we are afraid… afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger. ~Tad Williams

Truth fears no questions. ~Unknown

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously. ~Thomas Sowell

Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom. ~Thomas Jefferson

Love Quotes

* “Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.” ~ Henry Louis Mencken
* “Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” ~ Franklin P. Jones
* “Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” ~ Erica Jong
* “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” ~ Aristotle
* “Can miles truly separate you from friends… If you want to be with someone you love, aren’t you already there?” ~ Richard Bach
* “Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as two sides of an algebraic equation. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
* When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out. ~ Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973)
* “In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.” ~ Janos Arnay
* “Come live with me and be my love, and we will some new pleasures prove, of golden sands, and crystal beaches, with silken lines and silver hooks…” ~ John Dunne
* “I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun-warmed, flower-bordered path.” ~ Andre Gide
* “It’s so easy, To think about Love, To Talk about Love, To wish for Love, But it’s not always easy, To recognize Love, Even when we hold it…. In our hands.” ~ Jaka
* “Two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.” ~ John Keats
* “The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain signing to it…you and you alone make me feel that I am alive…Other men, it is said, have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.” ~ George Moore
* And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation”. ~ Kahlil Gibran
* “The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one’s relationship has a glowing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine accident.” ~ Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884-1941) English Novelist, Critic, Dramatist
* “A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.” ~ George Jean Nathan (1882-1958) American Editor, Critic
* “Love in its essence is spiritual fire.” ~ Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) Swedish Naturalist, Mathematician, Scientist, Theologian
* “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” – Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) American Novelist, Playwright, Anthropologist

Famous People Quotes #9

“It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man.” – Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell

“Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.” – Robert Orben

“The cynics are right nine times out of ten.” – Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

“There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.” – George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” – Revelation 6:8

“Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.” – Plato (427-347 B.C.)

“Plato was a bore.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

“Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.” – Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

“I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.” – Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

“Hemingway was a jerk.” – Harold Robbins

“Men are not disturbed by things, but the view they take of things.”
– Epictetus (55-135 A.D.)

“What about things like bullets?” – Herb Kimmel, Behavioralist, Professor of Psychology, upon hearing the above quote (1981)

“How can I lose to such an idiot?” – A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)

“Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.” – Woody Allen (1935-)

“I don’t feel good.” – The last words of Luther Burbank (1849-1926)

“Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.” – Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)

“Men have become the tools of their tools.” – Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant.” – Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines

“I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.” – Gore Vidal

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.” – Woody Allen (1935-)

“Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.” – Abba Eban (1915-2002)

“A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.” – Abba Eban (1915-2002)

“To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me.” – Charles William Stubbs

“Sanity is a madness put to good uses.” – George Santayana (1863-1952)

“Imitation is the sincerest form of television.” – Fred Allen (1894-1956)

“Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“In America, anybody can be president. That’s one of the risks you take.” – Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

“Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research.” – Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

“Why don’t you write books people can read?” – Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.” – T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

“Criticism is prejudice made plausible.” – Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

“It is better to be quotable than to be honest.” – Tom Stoppard

“Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.” – Karl Wallenda

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” – Sun Tzu

“A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.” – Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)

” The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay

“Never mistake motion for action.” – Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” – Sir Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-1971)

“Hell is paved with good samaritans.” – William M. Holden