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.
This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentenial of the Constitution], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever 'fixed' at the Philadelphia Convention... To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start. [Progressive]
The old grooves must be erased in your brain, without forming new ones. You must realize yourself as the immovable, behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens.
We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.
If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Under-world in a second, and examined it at leisure.
No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.
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