REFLECTIONS

The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. To be sure, theology is always yielding a little to the progress of knowledge, and only a Holy Roller in the mountains of Tennessee would dare to preach today what the popes preached in the thirteenth century.-- H. L. Mencken, Minority Report (1956), quoted from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to
please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely
girl."

H. L. Mencken- 1921

"As I grow older I am unpleasantly impressed by the fact that giving each
human being but one life is a bad scheme. He should have two at the lowest-
one for observing and studying the world, and the other for formulating
and settling down his conclusions about it. Forced, as he is by the present
irrirational arrangement, to undertake the second function before he has
made any substantial progress with the first, he limps along like an
athlete only half trained."
H.L. Mencken 1943

"Moderation in all things,... not too much life.
It often lasts too long."
H.L. Mencken-notebook

...facts rarely present themselves cleaned up and alone, ready to be admired and fussed over. Instead, nature bestows her blessings buried in mountains of garbage, and scientists rarely know what they have their hands on until they've sifted through the mess, laboriously, patiently, piece by piece. K.C. Cole. The Universe and the Teacup. Harcourt Brace, 1997

Security is an illusion. Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.
--- Helen Keller

When you are born, you are crying and everyone around you is smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you are smiling and everyone around you is crying. --- Anon

The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God's chillun,
but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
H.L. Mencken

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we will not find it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity:but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
—T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)
from "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"