Tag Archives: H.L. Mencken

June 12, 2015 · 4:34 pm

What’s Your Quotation Quotient? #429

Published June 12-14, 2015 at Montereyherald.com/lifestyle (Interactive version)


1. “A nation that destroys it’s soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”

A. Franklin D. Roosevelt

B. Mitch McConnell

C. Elton John

2. “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”

A. James Thurber

B. James Bond

C. James Madison

3. “Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn’t grow up can be vice president.”

A. Dan Quayle

B. Karl Marx

C. Johnny Carson

4. “I have always a sacred veneration for anyone I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher.”

A. John Wooden

B. Jonathan Swift

C. Joseph McCarthy

5. “A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.” 

A. Harry Shearer

B. Harry Potter

C. Harry S. Truman

6. “They say hard work never hurt anybody, but I figure why take the chance.”

A. Ronald Reagan

B. William Shakespeare

C. Queen Elizabeth II

7. “Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it.”

A. Martin Luther King

B. Maurice Chevalier

C. George Zimmer

8. “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”

A. B.F. Skinner

B. C.S. Lewis

C. H.L. Mencken

9. “The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.”

A. George Stephanopolous

B. Gene Hackman

C. Nancy Reagan

10. “Progress may have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.”

A. John McCain

B. Ogden Nash

C. Ferdinand Magellan

Answers: 1-A, 2-A , 3-C , 4-B , 5-C , 6-A , 7-B , 8-C , 9-A , 10-B

Scoring:               10–QQQQ = Quote-Master   

(number correct)        8-9–QQQ = Scholar                       

                                   6-7–QQ = Literate

                                  4-5–Q = Semi-Literate

                                 0-3–No Q = Quote-Dunce

BONUS QUOTE:

“Advice to children crossing the street: damn the lights. Watch the cars. The lights ain’t never killed nobody.”

~Moms Mabley, 1894-1975, was an American standup comedian.

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February 1, 2015 · 10:23 pm

What’s Your QQ*? #410

*QUOTATION QUOTIENT

(Interactive version published February 1, 2015 at Montereyherald.com.)

 

1. “Life is a long lesson in humility.”

 

A. Donald Trump

B. Marco Polo

C. James M. Barrie

 

2. “Laurel and Hardy, that’s John and Yoko. And we stand a better chance under that guise because all the serious people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Kennedy and Gandhi got shot.”

 

A. John Legend

B. John Lennon

C. John Travolta

 

3. “Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”

 

A. Jack Kerouac

B. Chevy Chase

C. Millard Fillmore

 

4. “And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

 

A. Roald Dahl

B. Joseph Stalin

C. Edgar Allan Poe

 

5. “I love mankind … it’s people I can’t stand!!”

 

A. Garfield

B. Charles Schulz

C. Abraham Lincoln

 

6. “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? It is because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.”

 

A. J. Krishnamurti

B. O. Henry

C. R. Kelly

 

7. “Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”

 

A. Bill Belichick

B. Ozzy Osbourne

C. Albert Camus

 

8. “Airline hostesses show you how to use a seatbelt in case you haven’t been in a car since 1965.”

 

A. Jerry Seinfeld

B. Mark Twain

C. Mario Andretti

 

9. “Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.”

 

A. Bill Clinton

B. Pete Carroll

C. H. L. Mencken

 

10. “That’s the biggest gap in sports, the difference between the winner and the loser of the Super Bowl.”

A. Steve Jobs

B. John Madden

C. O.J. Simpson

 

 

 

 

Answers: 1-C, 2-B , 3-A , 4-A , 5-B , 6-A , 7-C , 8-A , 9-C , 10-B

 

Scoring:               10–QQQQ = Quote-Master   

(number correct)        8-9–QQQ = Scholar                       

                                   6-7–QQ = Literate

                                  4-5–Q = Semi-Literate

                                 0-3–No Q = Quote-Dunce




 

BONUS QUOTES:

 “I’d run over my own mother to win the Super Bowl” – Washington Redskins guard Russ Grimm (Super Bowl XVIII)

 “I’d run over Russ Grimm’s mother to win the Super Bowl, too” – L. A. Raiders linebacker Matt Millen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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December 14, 2014 · 11:37 am

What’s Your QQ*? #403

*QUOTATION QUOTIENT

(Published December 14, 2014 in the Monterey Herald.)

 

1. “Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles.”

 

A. Charlie Chaplin

B. Charlie Rose

C. Charlie Brown

 

2. “My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”

 

A. Aristotle

B. F. Scott Fitzgerald

C. Roy Rogers

 

3. “Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.”

 

A. H. L. Mencken

B. Fred Astaire

C. Boris Pasternak

 

4. “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature…. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

 

A. Conan O’Brien

B. Hermione Granger

C. Helen Keller

 

5. “The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.”

 

A. Marcus Welby

B. Frank Lloyd Wright

C. Michelangelo

 

6. “Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.”

 

A. Mary Tyler Moore

B. Jackie Kennedy Onassis

C. Clare Boothe Luce

 

7. “The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”

 

A. Tom Wolfe

B. Tom Hanks

C. Tom Arnold

 

8. “Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.”

 

A. Stan Getz

B. Jesse Jackson

C. Matt Lauer

 

9. “Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,

That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

 

A. “Goodnight Moon”

B. “The Honeymooners”

C. “Romeo and Juliet”

 

10. “It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.”

 

A. David Rockefeller

B. Plutarch

C. Jeb Bush

 

 

Answers: 1-A, 2-B , 3-A , 4-C , 5-B , 6-C , 7-A , 8-B , 9-C , 10-B

 

Scoring:               10–QQQQ = Quote-Master   

(number correct)        8-9–QQQ = Scholar                       

                                   6-7–QQ = Literate

                                  4-5–Q = Semi-Literate

                                 0-3–No Q = Quote-Dunce




 

BONUS QUOTE:

 “Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.” ― John Erskine

 (Erskine, 1879-1951, was an American educator, musician, and author.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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September 28, 2014 · 11:07 pm

What’s Your QQ*? #392

*QUOTATION QUOTIENT

(Published September 28, 2014 in the Monterey Herald.)

 

1. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

 

A. Ellen DeGeneres

B. Eleanor Roosevelt

C. Bashar al-Assad

 

2. “Fame is a fickle food/ Upon a shifting plate.”

 

A. John Edwards

B. Ryan Seacrest

C. Emily Dickinson

 

3. “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

 

A. H.L. Mencken

B. Ralph Waldo Emerson

C. Lindsey Graham

 

4. “The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall. ”

 

A. Richard Nixon

B. Thurston Howell III

C. Vince Lombardi

 

 5. “I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”

 

A. Anthony Weiner

B. F. Scott Fitzgerald

C. Jillian Michaels

 

6. “When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.”

 

A. George Bernard Shaw

B. George Lopez

C. George Zimmerman

 

7. “Music begins to atrophy when it gets too far from the dance…poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.”

 

A. William Shakespeare

B. John Goodman

C. Ezra Pound

 

8. “Poems are made by fools like me,/ But only God can make a tree.”

 

A. Joyce Kilmer

B. Joyce Brothers

C. James Joyce

 

9. “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

 

A. Mark Twain

B. Angelo Di Girolamo

C. Rand Paul

 

10. “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”

 

A. Timothy Leary

B. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

C. Nikita Khrushchev

 

 

Answers: 1-B, 2-C , 3-A , 4-C , 5-B , 6-A , 7-C , 8-A , 9-A , 10-B

 

Scoring:               10–QQQQ = Quote-Master   

(number correct)        8-9–QQQ = Scholar                       

                                   6-7–QQ = Literate

                                  4-5–Q = Semi-Literate

                                 0-3–No Q = Quote-Dunce




 

BONUS QUOTE:

“The college was not founded to give society what it wants.  Quite the contrary.”  — May Sarton

 (Sarton, 1912-1855, was an American poet, novelist and memoirist.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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