“No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.”
The Art Eternal, New York Evening Mail (1918)
1910s
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H.L. Mencken 281
American journalist and writer 1880–1956Related quotes

Journal and Papers 5622 (Papers IV A 65) n.d. 1843
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s
Context: Once in his early youth a man allowed himself to be so far carried away in an overwrought irresponsible state as to visit a prostitute. It is all forgotten. Now he wants to get married. Then anxiety stirs. He is tortured day and night with the thought that he might possibly be a father, that somewhere in the world there could be a created being who owed his life to him. He cannot share his secret with anyone; he does not even have any reliable knowledge of the fact. –For this reason the incident must have involved a prostitute and taken place in the wantonness of youth; had it been a little infatuated or an actual seduction, it would be hard to imagine that he could know nothing about it, but now this this very ignorance is the basis of his agitated torment. On the other hand, precisely because of the rashness of the whole affair, his misgivings do not really start until he actually falls in love.

Speech to the United Nations General Assembly (26 September 2007)
2000s, 2005 - 2009

“It seems to be a fact that man, tortured by his demons, avenges himself blindly on his fellow-man.”
Source: Letters to Milena

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 320

“Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.”
Oceana, or, England and Her Colonies (1886) [C. Scribner's Sons, 1972, 396 pages], p. 67
Context: Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

Campaign speech in Chicago (6 April 1912)
1910s