A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

—H. L. Mencken

cynicism death flowers coffins

About H. L. Mencken

Portrait of H. L. Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also earned him...

More quotations from H. L. Mencken

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

—H. L. Mencken

love imagination intelligence

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority.… All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them.

—H. L. Mencken

progress certainty morality inferiority doubt enforcement

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.

—H. L. Mencken

truth belief lying

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

—H. L. Mencken in Minority Report

humanity power greed idealism

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

—H. L. Mencken

conscience voice looking observation

More quotations tagged with “flowers”

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

—Claude Monet

art flowers painting

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

—Samuel Johnson

spring flowers autumn

I hate flowers—I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.

—Georgia O'Keeffe

art flowers painting

Arnold Bennett visited Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw in his apartment and, knowing his host's love of flowers, was surprised that there was not a single vase of flowers to be seen. He remarked on their absence to Shaw: "But I thought you were so fond of flowers."
"I am," said Shaw, "and I'm very fond of children, too, but I don't chop their heads off and stand them in pots about the house.

—The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes

children death flowers decapitation

Flowers… put up no resistance to attack, suffer evil rather than inflicting it, imitate carnal love, multiply without fighting, and die without complaining.… They have realized the dream of Buddha: to desire nothing, to tolerate everything, to be absorbed in oneself to the depths of the unconscious will.

—J. Rambosson

evil will fighting desire flowers tolerance

History

10 Dec 2014 Added