H. L. Mencken Quotes
-
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
-
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
-
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
-
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.
-
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
-
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
-
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
-
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
-
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
-
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
-
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
-
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
-
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
-
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
-
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
-
It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
-
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
-
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
-
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.
-
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.
-
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
-
The public...demands certainties...But there are no certainties.
-
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.