H. L. Mencken Quotes
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History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.
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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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I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
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Life may not be exactly pleasant, but it is at least not dull. Heave yourself into Hell today, and you may miss, tomorrow or next day, another Scopes trial, or another War to End War, or perchance a rich and buxom widow with all her first husband's clothes. There are always more Hardings hatching. I advocate hanging on as long as possible.
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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.
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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.
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As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
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Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.
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Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
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The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
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Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.
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The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
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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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When A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
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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.
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Love, to the inferior man, remains almost wholly a physical matter. The heroine he most admires is the one who offers the grossest sexual provocation; the hero who makes his wife roll her eyes is a perambulating phallus.
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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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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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A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
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The virulence of the national appetite for bogus revelation.
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Nature abhors a moron.
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It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.
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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.