H. L. Mencken Quotes
-
How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
-
Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.
-
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.
-
Only a jackass ever talks over his affairs with a woman, whether she be his sweetheart, wife, or sister, or mother.
-
Misogynist - A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
-
Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
-
No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
-
The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative passion.
-
The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
-
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
-
What I admire most in any man is a serene spirit, a steady freedom from moral indignation, and all-embracing tolerance--in brief,what is commonly called sportsmanship.
-
American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
-
Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.
-
The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
-
I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.
-
Some boys go to college and eventually succeed in getting out. Others go to college and never succeed in getting out. The latter are called professors.
-
One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.
-
The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
-
History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.
-
People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.
-
The professor must be an obscurantist or he is nothing; he has a special and unmatchable talent for dullness, his central aim is not to expose the truth clearly, but to exhibit his profundity, his esotericity - in brief to stagger sophomores and other professors.
-
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
-
The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.
-
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.