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.
Mankind invented the atomic bomb, _x000D_ but no mouse would ever construct _x000D_ a mousetrap.
their powerlessness, innocence, and imagination fused to enable them to turn time inside out, travel on the wind, and enter the souls of animals.
A man may be theologically knowing and spiritually ignorant.
All meditations are nothing but efforts to bring you to the present. When you live in the present moment, with no past hanging around you, with no future projection, you are free from life and death, you are free from body and mind. You are free - simply free - you are freedom.
When a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is the chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.
The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology.
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