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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 870
AUTHOR: Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956)
QUOTATION: An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.
ATTRIBUTION: H. L. MENCKEN, A Little Book in C Major, p. 19 (1916).

He later altered this to read “…concludes that it will also make better soup.”—A Book of Burlesques, p. 205 (1924) and A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 617 (1949).
SUBJECTS: Idealists