"Conscience is the accumulated sediment of ancestral..." - Quote by H L Mencken
Conscience is the accumulated sediment of ancestral faint- heartedness
More by H L Mencken
“A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.”
“School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.”
“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.”
More on Conscience
“There is nothing more alluring to man than freedom of conscience, but neither is there anything more agonizing.”
“Are we not also married to conscience which we would love to get rid of often enough since it is more bothersome than a man or a woman ever could become?”
“A man should not play the coward to his deeds. He should not repudiate them once he has performed them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.”
More on Fear
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”
“I want to have children, but my friends scare me. One of my friends told me she was in labor for 36 hours. I don't even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours.”
“Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.”