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| Henry Louis Mencken born September 1880 died January 1956 was a renowned author, critic, and satirist. |
Quotes by H. L. Mencken
A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself... Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.
The stupid man is one who on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable... A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill.
The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who on the grounds of decorum and morality avoids the game of love. He is one who puts his own ease and security above the most laudable of philanthropies.
Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.
The smallest atom of truth represents some man’s bitter toil and agony; for every pondered chuck of it there is a brave truth-seeker’s grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.
There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of puritanical religion, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness; to bring him down to the miserable level of “good” men, i.e. of stupid, cowardly, and chronically unhappy men.
If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.
The fundamental trouble with marriage is that it shakes a man’s confidence in himself, and so greatly diminishes his general competence and effectiveness. His habit of mind becomes that of a commander who has lost a decisive and calamitous battle. He quite trusts himself thereafter.
A man’s women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity.
The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother’s milk.
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.
The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.
It is a dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull. The more a man dreams, the less he believes.
The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well to do. Nothing so neatly eases one’s way through life, especially in democratic countries.
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.
New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilisation.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favoured by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with; even if he drank.
Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
Of Shakespeare: After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well known quotations.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you wish you weren’t.
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Ti's more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents.
