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.
To plunder, to lie, to show your arse, are three essentials for climbing high.
I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering.
This life was not intended to be the place of our perfection, but the preparation for it.
The demands of Jesus are difficult just because they require us to do something extraordinary. At the same time he asks us to regard these as something usual, ordinary.
What more ghastly image can be called up than that of a man betrayed by his body who, simply because he did not die in time, lives out the comedy while awaiting the end, face to face with that God he does not adore, serving him as he served life, kneeling before a void and arms outstretched toward a heaven without eloquence that he knows to be also without depth?
If the philosophy of Christianity were lived, wars would cease, unhappiness would cease, economic problems would be solved, poverty would be wiped from the face of the earth, and man's inhumanity to man would be transmuted into a spirit of mutual helpfulness.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.