Tag Archives: H.L. Mencken

What’s Your QQ*? #352

*Quotation Quotient

  (Published December 22, 2013 in the Monterey County Herald.)

 

1. “Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all thirty feet tall.”

A. Pope Francis

B. W.C. Fields

C. Larry Wilde

 

2. “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”

A. Walt Disney

B. Walt Whitman

C. Walter White

 

3. “Heaven and hell is right now…. You make it heaven or you make it hell by your actions.”

A. George Harrison

B.  Rachael Ray

C. Colin Kaepernick

 

4. “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”

A. Rudyard Kipling

B. Jonas Salk

C. Arnold Schwarzenegger

 

5. “Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.”

A. Archie Bunker

B. Mitch McConnell

C. Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

6. “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.”

A. Raul Castro

B. Abraham Maslow

C. William Tecumseh Sherman

 

7. “The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.”

A. Raymond Chandler

B. John Roberts

C. Barbra Streisand

 

8. “The first TV babies are now writing with a TV mind that has no attention span at all.”

A. Mark Twain

B. Gore Vidal

C. Marilyn Monroe

 

9. “A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”

A. D.B. Cooper

B. H.R. Haldeman

C. H.L. Mencken

 

10. “I heard the bells on Christmas Day/ Their old, familiar carols play,/

And wild and sweet/ The words repeat/ Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

A. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

B. Charles Dickens

C. Martin Luther King

 

 

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

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:

“‘Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain’t no flies on me,

But jest ‘fore Christmas I’m as good as I kin be!” -Eugene Field

(Field, 1850-1895, was an American humorist and writer of children’s poetry.)

 

 

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What’s Your QQ*? #350

*Quotation Quotient

  (Published December 8, 2013 in the Monterey County Herald.)

1. “That’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

A. Johnny Carson

B. Chet Huntley

C. Garrison Keillor

 

2. “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”

A. Charles Bukowski

B. Adlai Stevenson

C. Buster Keaton

 

3. “In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”

A. Engelbert Humperdinck

B. George Washington

C. Leo Tolstoy

 

4. “You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans.”

A. Harry Truman

B. Ronald Reagan

C. Yogi Bear

 

 

5. “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun.”

A. Noel Coward

B. William Shakespeare

C. Barbara Woodhouse

 

6. “Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.”

A. Katy Perry

B. John Updike

C. Harriet Tubman

 

7. “The human mind has to ask ‘Who, what, whence, whither, why am I?’ And it is very doubtful if the human mind can answer any of these questions.”

A. R. D. Laing

B. Alexander Hamilton

C. Kanye West

 

8. “Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.”

A. Paul Gauguin

B. Jimmy Carter

C. H. L. Mencken

 

9. “History is a vast early warning system.”

A. Norman Rockwell

B. Norman Bates

C. Norman Cousins

 

10. “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

A. Muhammad Ali

B. Nelson Mandela

C. Sandra Bullock

 

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

 

“To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.” – Alexander Smith

 (Smith, 1829-1867, was a Scottish poet.)

 

 

 

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What’s Your QQ*? #347

*Quotation Quotient

  (Published November 17, 2013 in the Monterey County Herald.)

1. “We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy.”

 A. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

B. Ralph Waldo Emerson

C. Confucius

 

2. “Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.”

A. Mary Ingalls

B. Chelsea Handler

C. Helen Keller

 

3. “A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!”

A. William Shakespeare

B. Brian Boudreau

C. Gary Stevens

 

4. “What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”

A. J. Edgar Hoover

B. Anthony Weiner

C. Ernest Hemingway

 

5. Los Angeles: “Nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis.”

A. H.L. Mencken

B. Bill Maher

C. Clark Kent

 

6. “And that’s the way it is.”

A. Edward R. Murrow

B. Walter Cronkite

C. Dina Ruiz Eastwood

 

7. “I hate housework. You make the beds, you wash the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.”

A. Princess Diana

B. Martha Stewart

C. Joan Rivers

 

8. “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

A. George Orwell

B. Rob Reiner

C. Eric Holder

 

9. “Round up the usual suspects.”

A. “Risky Business”

B. “The Treasure of Sierra Madre”

C. “Casablanca”

 

10. “It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.”

A. Thomas Hobbes

B. Calvin and Hobbes

C. Joel Osteen

 

Answers:  1-B, 2-C , 3-A , 4-C , 5-A , 6-B , 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 QUOTE:

 

“Life isn’t fair, it’s just fairer than death, that’s all.” – William Goldman

 

(Goldman, b. 1931-, is an American novelist, playwright and screenwriter.)

 

 

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What’s Your QQ*? #342

*Quotation Quotient

  (Published October 13, 2013 in the Monterey County Herald.)

1. “To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”

A. Franklin D. Roosevelt

B. Thomas Paine

C. Bill Murray

2. “I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.”

A. Helen Keller

B. Stephen Hawking

C. Larry Flynt

 3. “What light through yonder window breaks?/ It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”

A. William Shakespeare

B. Margaret Thatcher

C. Galileo Galilei

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

A. Rudolph Hess

B. Frank Lloyd Wright

C. H.L. Mencken

5. “Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.”

A. Carl Jung

B. Humphrey Bogart

C. Dr. Drew Pinsky

6. “There is one thing about being President — nobody can tell you when to sit down.”

A. Mitt Romney

B. Thomas Jefferson

C. Dwight Eisenhower

7. “There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

A. Scarlett Johansson

B. Oscar Wilde

C. Anderson Cooper

8. “Sickness is a belief, which must be annihilated by the divine Mind.”

A. Mary Baker Eddy

B. Tom Cruise

C. Dr. Oz

9. “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.”

A. Richard Simmons

B. John Kerry

C. Mark Twain

10. “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”

A. Jonathan Livingston Seagull

B. Jonathan Winters

C. Jonathan Swift

 

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

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:

“A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.” –

Edward W. Howe

 (Howe, 1853-1937, was an American author and editor.)

 

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