A Quote by H. L. Mencken

All the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen and hydrogen.

H. L. Mencken

Quote Topics

Beautiful Beautiful Thing Beautiful Things Been Beethoven Came Charming Cocktail Color Given Hour Humanity Hydrogen Martini Men Mere More Nine Oxygen Something Song Songs Tap Tap Water Than Things Turned Water

Quote Author

H. L. Mencken
American - Writer
September 12, 1880 - January 29, 1956

Apart from the obvious advantages of having ice to melt, filter, then drink, you can also break apart the water's hydrogen from its oxygen. Use the hydrogen and some of the oxygen as active ingredients in rocket fuel and keep the rest of the oxygen for breathing. And in your spare time between space missions, you can always go ice skating on the frozen lake created with the extracted water.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

With sufficient water on the Moon, solar energy can be used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is, of course, critical for humans to breathe and the water important for us to drink.

Peter Diamandis

Everybody is different. Some writers can write reams of great books and then J. D. Salinger wrote just a few. Beethoven wrote nine symphonies. They were all phenomenal. Mozart wrote some 40 symphonies, and they were all phenomenal. That doesn't mean Beethoven was a lesser writer, it's just some guys are capable of more productivity, some guys take more time.

Billy Joel

Getting to do 'December Songs' in a cabaret-style format was so interesting because it's like a one-woman song cycle that actually tells a story. It feels like a theatrical experience more than a cabaret because I didn't talk in between. We went from one song to the next, nine songs in a row - bam - I told the story in half an hour.

Laura Osnes

To me, a song is not finished. To me, there's no such thing as a finished anything. All of Beethoven's nine symphonies, to me, are one. I think of it as having no beginning and no end.

Wayne Shorter

Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes it water and nobody knows what that is.

D. H. Lawrence

I grew up loving symphonies. Beethoven is beautiful.

Lil Xan

Beethoven's symphonies are not 'relaxing.' They are the most exciting things that have ever been created by a human being.

Joshua Bell

The person and society are yoked, like mind and body. Arguing which is more important is like debating whether oxygen or hydrogen is the more essential property of water.

Marilyn Ferguson

There is no water in oxygen, no water in hydrogen: it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination of the living God, rushing from under the great white throne of the glacier. The very thought of it makes one gasp with an elemental joy no metaphysician can analyse.

George MacDonald

Playing the Beethoven symphonies, for example, is a consummate experience for a musician because Beethoven speaks so directly to who we are as people.

Joshua Bell

Besides, the sense of safety offered by bottled water is a mirage. It turns out that breathing, not drinking, constitutes our main route of exposure to volatile pollutants in tap water, such as solvents, pesticides, and byproducts of water chlorination. As soon as the toilet is flushed or the faucet turned on-or the bathtub, the shower, the humidifier, the washing machine-these contaminants leave the water and enter the air. A recent study shows that the most efficient way of exposing yourself to chemical contaminants in tap water is to turn on a dishwasher.

Sandra Steingraber

Beautiful things comfort; they bring a real clarity and ease. We have to continue to make our environments beautiful - it's sort of like a prayer. If you surround yourself with beautiful things, you have a better life - one with more oxygen.

Anjelica Huston

The wood of any tree growing anywhere records fairly faithfully the oxygen and hydrogen chemistry of the water the plant has access to through precipitation.

Hope Jahren

A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal.