H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.
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I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
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Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
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It is difficult to imagine anyone having any real hopes for the human race in the face of the fact that the great majority of men still believe that the universe is run by a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft and girth, who is nevertheless interested in the minutest details of the private conduct of even the meanest man.
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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.
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When A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
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Voting is simply a way of determining which side is the stronger without putting it to the test of fighting.
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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.
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As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
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A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.
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To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
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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.
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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
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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.
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Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake
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Nature abhors a moron.
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Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
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One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.
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As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all resolute and honest dealing with what, after all, must be every healthy literature's elementary materials.
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A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four. For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent men.
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Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable of any such confusion of ideas; he seldom allowed sentimentality to turn him from the glaring fact.
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Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.