3 Sims was born in Canada. He was commander of the naval forces in European waters throughout World War I. He had Japanese, Belgian and Italian orders, and was a LL.D. of Yale, Harvard, Tufts, Pennsylvania, Columbia, Williams, Juniata, Stevens, McGill, Queen’s, California, Union, Wesleyan, and Cambridge (England). He died in 1936.
4 From 1922 onward he struck this out.
5 A Bevo officer was one who fought the wicked Hun from a desk in Washington. The name derived from that of a near-beer of the time.
6 A band of patriots which made a deafening uproar in the 1914–1918 era. Its fronts were Elihu Root and Alton B. Parker.
7 An organization of amateur detectives working under the ægis of the Department of Justice. In 1917 its operatives reported that I was an intimate associate and agent of “the German monster, Nietzsky,” and I was solemnly investigated. But I was a cunning fellow in those days and full of a malicious humor, so I not only managed to throw off the charge but even to write the report upon myself. I need not say that it gave me a clean bill of health—and I still have a carbon to prove it. As a general rule the American Protective League confined itself to easier victims. Its specialty was harassing German waiters.
8 Creel served as chairman of what was called the Committee on Public Information from 1917 to 1919. Its chief business was to propagate the official doctrine as to the causes and issues of the war. To that end Creel recruited his horde of college historians and they solemnly certified to the truth of everything that emanated from Washington and London. The Sisson documents were supposed to show a sinister conspiracy of the Russian Communists, but what the specifications were I forget. Creel’s committee was also in charge of newspaper censorship during the war.
9 These were bores who visited the movie parlors of the time and broke in upon The Perils of Pauline with brief but rousing speeches. How many were in practise first and last I do not know, but there must have been hundreds of thousands. They were chiefly recruited from the ranks of Rotarians, Kiwanians, chautauquans, evangelical clergymen, and minor political aspirants.
10 Hillis was a Presbyterian clergyman, but went over to the Congregationalists and spent most of his life in the old pulpit of Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn. He brought out a book called German Atrocities in 1918, in which all of the most fantastic inventions of the English propaganda bureau were treated gravely. Such horrors apparently fascinated him, and he wallowed in them in a really obscene manner. He died in 1929. Van Dyke, another Presbyterian, took the same line, though less violently. He had been pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York, but in the war era was professor of English literature at Princeton. He was taken gravely as a poet and essayist in his day, and rose to be president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, but his writings were hollow and he is now pretty well forgotten. He died in 1933.
11 An organization of professional patriots analogous to the American Protective League, but even worse. Its heroic members specialized in daubing yellow paint on the houses of persons suspected of having doubts about the Wilson idealism. In some regions they also resorted to assault, always at odds of at least 10 to 1.
12 A. Mitchell Palmer, a Quaker, was Attorney-General under Wilson. He was the superintendent of many ferocious spy-hunts. He died in 1936. Albert Sidney Burleson was Wilson’s Postmaster General. He specialized in the censorship of the mails. He died in 1937.
1 Now Osle.
XXX. SENTENTIÆ
These maxims, epigrams and apothegms cover a long range in time. The earliest were First printed in the Smart Set in 1912; the latest come from note-books never printed at all. In 1916 I published a collection under the title of A Little Book in C Major. Four years later it was taken, in part, into a revised edition of A Book of Burlesques, and there survived until that book went out of print in the late 30s
The Mind of Man
WHEN a man laughs at his troubles he loses a good many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue.
Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
Never let your inferiors do you a favor. It will be extremely costly.
Nature abhors a moron.
The New Logic – It would be nice if it worked. Ergo, it will work.
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
A metaphysician is one who believes it when toxins from a dilapidated liver makes his brain whisper that mind is the boss of liver.
First stanza: Millions now living will never die. Second stanza: No more war.
I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
Living with a dog is messy—like living with an idealist.
Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Evil is that which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.
Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time.
Fame – An embalmer trembling with stagefright.
Hope is a pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.
Immorality is the morality of those who are having a better time. You will never convince the average farmer’s mare that the late Maud S. was not dreadfully immoral.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
Every man is his own hell.
What makes philosophy so tedious is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who sought to cure a slight hyperacidity by prescribing a carload of burned oyster-shells.
Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn’t believe that he is dead.
As I stoop to lace my shoe you clout me over the coccyx with a length of hickory (Carya laciniosa). I conclude instantly that you are a jackass. This is a whole process of human thought in little. This also is free will.
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are wrong.
Platitude – An idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
Progress is the process whereby the human race is getting rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
Remorse – Regret that one waited so long to do it.
Self-Respect – The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
Suicide is a belated acquiescence in the opinion of one’s wife’s relatives.
Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
Tombstone – An ugly reminder of one who has been forgotten.
Truth – Something somehow discreditable to someone.
Popularity – The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.
Pensioner – A kept patriot.
There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
We are here and it is now: further than that all
human knowledge is moonshine.
The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each armed with a fly-swatter.
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
Thanksgiving Day – A day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
A sob is a sound made by women, babies, tenors, clergymen, actors and drunken men.
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
Liar – (a) One who pretends to be very good; (b) one who pretends to be very bad.
It costs more to maintain ten vices than one virtue.
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
Do I let the chandala suffer, and consign them, as old Friedrich used to say, to statistics and the devil? Well, so does God.
A gentleman is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.
Historian – An unsuccessful novelist.
Life is a dead-end street.
Of all escape mechanisms death is the most efficient.
Masculum et Feminam Creavit Eos.
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgment of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
When a woman says she won’t, it is a good sign that she will. And when she says she will it is an even better sign.
Happiness is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.
No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.
The honeymoon is the time during which the bride believes the bridegroom’s word of honor.
Every bachelor is a hero to some married woman.
At the Altar – The Bride: “At last! At last!” The Bridegroom: “Too late! Too late!”
Jealousy is the theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.
The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.
Wealth – Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier. And also a good deal more foolish.
In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnaught and man from an open raft.
Alimony – The ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
Temptation is woman’s weapon and man’s excuse.
Optimist – The sort of man who marries his sister’s best friend.
When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.
Women do not like timid men. Cats do not like prudent rats.
He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.
In every woman’s life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.
A bachelor is one who wants a wife, but is glad he hasn’t got her.
Women usually enjoy annoying their husbands, but not when they annoy them by growing fat.
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness. But after that he begins to bunch them.
Dispatch from Reno – The rich leap from the bed to the altar; the poor leap from the altar to the bed.
Husband – One who played safe and is now played safely. A No. 16 neck in a No. 151/2 collar.
Misogynist – A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
Man’s objection to love is that it dies hard: women’s, that when it is dead it stays dead.
Women have simple tastes. They can get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later. For another thing, they die earlier.
The man who marries for love alone is at least honest. But so was Czolgosz.
When a husband’s story is belived, he begins to suspect his wife.
A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner’s inquest.
How little it takes to make life unbearable.… A pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman’s laugh.
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
Whenever a woman begins to talk of anything, she is talking to, of, or at a man.
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
The worst man hesitates when choosing a mother for his children. And hesitating, he is lost.
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all other men are just as easy to fool.
The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her.
A man may be a fool and not know it—but not if he is married.
No man is ever too old to look at a woman, and no woman is ever too fat to hope that he will look.
Bachelors have consciences. Married men have wives.
Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn’t they’d be married, too.
Man is a natural polygamist. He always has one woman leading him by the nose and another hanging on to his coat-tails.
All women, soon or late, are jealous of their daughters; all men, soon or late, are envious of their sons.
The Citizen and the State
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x × y is less than y.
Syllogisms à la Mode – If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against demagogues, then you are against democracy. If you are against Christianity, then you are against God. If you are against trying a can of Old Dr. Quack’s Cancer Salve, then you are in favor of letting Uncle Julius die.
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
It takes only one Communist to ruin a labor union. It takes only one drop of Oleum tiglii to turn a respectable glass of rye into a Mickey Finn.
Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
The war on privilege will never end. Its next great campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
Politician – Any man with influence enough to get his old mother a job as charwoman in the City Hall.
Democracy tries an endless succession of arcana as a movie gal tries an endless series of husbands, hoping against hope for one who is sober, self-supporting, faithful, and not too watchful.
&nbs
p; Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.
If Wall Street really wants to dispose of John L. Lewis, let it invite him to a swell feed, hand him a fifty-cent cigar with a torpedo in it, and so burn off his eyebrows.
There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.
The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
There are now only two classes of men in the United States: those who work for their livings, and those who vote for them.
The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called Liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth on the fair-grounds, including the Communists. The Communists have some talents too, but they always fall short of believing in the Liberals.
A demagogue’s mind is a beautiful mechanism. It can think anything he asks it to think.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey-cage.
Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a messiah with a bloody nose.
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.
Chorus of Socialists: “To hell with capital!” Antiphon of anti-Socialists: “To hell with ‘Das Kapital’!”
Democracy is that system of government under which the people, having 60,000,000 native-born adult whites to choose from, including thousands who are handsome and many who are wise, pick out a Coolidge to be head of the state. It is as if a hungry man, set before a banquet prepared by master cooks and covering a table an acre in area, should turn his back upon the feast and stay his stomach by catching and eating flies.
The smarter the politician, the more things he believes and the less he believes any of them.
The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It is like trying to breed cattle with all cows and no bulls.
Mencken Chrestomathy (Vintage) Page 70
