If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl. – H.L. Mencken
If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse — as a man shoots himself. – H.L. Mencken
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. – H.L. Mencken
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. – H.L. Mencken
Whatever its origin, a belief in spirits seems to have been common to all the nations of the ancient world who have left us any record of themselves. Ghosts began to walk early, and are walking still, in spite of the shrill cock-crow of wir haben ja aufgeklärt. – James Russell Lowell, “Witchcraft”
As surely as you are a living man, so surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in my face, and walk away with my trousers: nor was I able to spring from my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow. – Thomas Ingoldsby, “The Spectre of Tappington,” 1837