Everyman is thoroughly happy twice in his life, just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one.
Interpretation
Happiness is experienced at the beginnings and endings of romantic relationships.
This quote by H. L. Mencken suggests that an individual's greatest moments of happiness often occur during two significant events in their romantic life: the joy of discovering love for the first time, and the relief or freedom that sometimes follows the end of a romantic relationship. It highlights the emotional peaks and troughs that characterize love and relationships, illuminating the complex nature of human feelings.
In practice
This quote would be great to share during a speech about the ups and downs of human relationships.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
The man who foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my most ungrudging love; and the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me.
I might have enjoyed the company of a woman or two... Or three but that had never stopped me from loving you.
You know, the man of my dreams might walk round the corner tomorrow. I'm older and wiser and I think I'd make a great girlfriend. I live in the realm of romantic possibility.
If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.
It's total bullshit," he said. "The whole thing. Eighty percent survival rate and he's in the twenty percent? Bullshit. He was such a bright kid. It's bullshit. I hate it. But it was sure a privilege to love him, huh?
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
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