“A cynic is a man who when he smells flowers looks around for a coffin.”
More from H. L. Mencken on Philosophy
“Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.”
“A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.”
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.”
“If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.”
“We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”
“Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Obedience is doing what is told regardless of what is right.”
“Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”
“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.”
“Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn’t believe he is dead.”
“What men value in the world is not rights but privileges.”
Others on Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein
22 quotes“The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.”
Christopher Hitchens
22 quotes“How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of...”
Nietzsche
22 quotes“One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.”
Carl Jung
21 quotes“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
Immanuel Kant
20 quotes“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
Heraclitus
19 quotes“All things flow nothing abides.”
C.S. Lewis
15 quotes“[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
14 quotes“Consciousness is man's greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfaction...”
Samuel Beckett
14 quotes“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”
Napoleon
14 quotes“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
Hermann Hesse
13 quotes“The middle class prefers comfort to pleasure convenience to liberty and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner co...”
Joseph Conrad
13 quotes“The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future.”