Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops
Interpretation
The quest for knowledge can lead us to doubt the existence of unknown mysteries, yet those mysteries remain regardless.
H. L. Mencken suggests that as we uncover more truths and secrets about the world, we may start to dismiss the idea that there are things beyond our comprehension. However, he reminds us that some mysteries persist, existing quietly and perhaps waiting to be recognized, despite our increasing grasp on knowledge.
In practice
In a philosophical discussion about the limits of human understanding.
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.
What a fool I was! and yet, in the sight of angels, are we any wiser as we grow older? It seems to me, only, that our illusions change as we go on; but, still, we are madmen all the same.
Sinners cannot obey the gospel, any more than the law, without renewal of heart.
I urge you to sin. But not against these itty-bitty religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism-or their secular derivatives, Marxism, Maoism, Freudianism and Jungianism-whic h are all derivatives of the big religion of patriarchy. Sin against the infrastructure itself!
It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the over-population of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat.
How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.
There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.
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