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
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them. – H.L. Mencken
Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. – H.L. Mencken
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married. – 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”
It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it. – Samuel Johnson, quoted by James Boswell