H. L. Mencken Quotes

There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of Milton is that he functions as a Milton.

Quotes to Explore
-
I'm a very spontaneous person. If someone aggravates me, I'm going to go after them. I wake up every morning, and I say, 'What bad guys should I go after today?'
-
There has always been a saying in baseball that you can't make a hitter, but I think you can improve a hitter. More than you can improve a fielder. More mistakes are made hitting than in any other part of the game.
-
Perhaps a hundred people assembled one evening, May 15, 1876, at the time when the country was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its political independence.
-
As a longtime former resident of 15 years in Washington, I wish that everybody would stay off the Mall with their political cause so that we can get out there, you know, and play flag football or Frisbee, or walk the dog or something - you know, which is, you know, what the National Mall should be for, in my personal opinion.
-
I believe people have to follow their dreams - I did.
-
At least I can say that I'm honest.
-
I was probably the best that ever walked this earth. And I could take a punch. I could deliver a punch. I didn't have the hardest punch in the world but my punches were sharp and they were crisp. And if you took too many of them, you would be knocked out.
-
I suppose I sometimes used to act like I wasn't a human being... Sometimes I look back at myself and remember things I used to say, or my hairstyle, and I cringe.
-
The flute was an alternative to being a small fish in an increasingly bigger pool filled with a number of great guitar players.
-
I've always been captivated by the Voynich Manuscript - the mysterious, 15th-century encrypted codex that still baffles cryptologists, linguists, and historians.
-
I think the older you get, the more 'let's cut to the chase' you get, 'let's quit quibbling about this, let's tell it like it is.'
-
I will not say sorry and be pardoned for doing a godly act.
-
The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.
-
We might be more inclined to think about the longer term if we were more aware of what is happening around us. Perhaps daily weather forecasts could include a few basic facts about the Earth's vital signs or details of where climate change is increasing the likelihood of damaging weather?
-
I want to make pop cool again, and the only way I can do that is by being ambitious and grand.
-
Fix a few things here, improve a few things there, launch a new feature every so often. That's coasting. And I don't want Basecamp to coast.
-
Play Trivial Pursuit with me, and you'll be astonished. I can remember every outfit I wore to every party going back to 1983.
-
It's easy to fictionalize an issue when you're not aware of the many ways in which you are privileged by it.
-
Don't poets know it Better than others? God can't be always everywhere: and, so, Invented Mothers.
-
Painters and poets are obliged to exaggerate the proportions of their figures in order to give true perspective.
-
There were the usual exhortations to purity – think of the novel not as your opportunity to get rich or famous but to wrestle, in your own way, with the titans of the form – exhortations poets don’t have to make, given the economic marginality of the art, an economic marginality that soon all literature will share.
-
Parents should keep 'Eyes Wide Open' next to the 'Kinsey Report' on their shelves.
-
There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of Milton is that he functions as a Milton.