What a character!

Sportswriter Heywood Hale Broun was born on this day in 1918. His famous remark is "Sports do not build character. They reveal it."


"I hate all sports as rabidly as a man who loves sports hates common sense." -- H. L. Mencken.

   Most of his life’s activity, it occurred to Sully, had consisted in just about equal parts of sports, reading and drinking. The rest had been sheer boredom. All of it had been boredom, to one degree or another, for that matter. Life was short only in retrospect; when it was happening it could take forever.  --  Chapter 22, The Misforgotten.

Happy Valentine's Day

"To be in love is to be in a state of perpetual anaesthesia." -- H. L. Mencken.

His reverence for women hadn’t forestalled him from treating them vilely. Rae Ann had a point there, too. He’d always approached the opposite sex with trepidation, if not outright terror, but once he’d made inroads he was often over-aggressive, particularly when stoked by alcohol. Even so, he was typically astounded and somewhat suspicious whenever a woman consented to have sex with him, and no matter how satisfying the experience turned out to be, he invariably came away from it with a lower opinion of his partner than he’d had before. That attitude, he realized, had foredoomed his marriage.  --  Chapter 22, The Misforgotten.

To live, and to do good, is to suffer

Albert Schweitzer was born on this day in 1875.

“High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.” – H. L. Mencken.

“A humanitarian is always a hypocrite.” – George Orwell.

Chapter 13, maybe

The American philosopher William James was born on this day in 1842. He wrote:


"Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism."

And here is chapter and verse from H. L. Mencken:

"No one knows who created the visible universe, and it is infinitely improbable that anything properly described as evidence on the point will ever be discovered. No one knows what motives or intentions, if any, lie behind what we call natural laws. No one knows why man has his present form. No one knows why sin and suffering were sent into this world--that is, why the fashioning of man was badly botched."

Her stories weren't corny, though

American novelist Willa Cather was born on this day in 1873, in Virginia.


When she was 10 years old, she moved to Nebraska, where she grew up and which she later made the setting of her most famous novels, O Pioneers! and My Antonia.

H. L. Mencken said of her and her books:

"I don't care how well she writes; I don't give a damn what people in Nebraska do."