Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.
Interpretation
People often elevate their flaws or fears to noble qualities, suggesting that both fear of death and fear of living can be seen as virtuous.
This quote by H. L. Mencken highlights the tendency of individuals to disguise their personal fears and weaknesses as virtues. By equating the fear of death and the fear of life to piety, Mencken suggests that what is often perceived as a noble quality may actually stem from underlying insecurities or human flaws. This perspective invites a reflection on how society often celebrates certain fears that may, in fact, be manifestations of weakness instead of true virtue.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the concept of morality and how societal values shape our understanding of virtue.
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.
As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.
In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be.
If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.
We never change. Neither our socks nor our masters nor our opinions, or we're so slow about it that it's no use. We were born loyal and that's what killed us! Soldiers free of charge, heroes for everyone else, talking monkeys, tortured words, we are the minions of King Misery...It's not a life.
We know all their gods; they ignore ours. What they call our sins are our gods, and what they call their gods, we name otherwise.
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