Quotes by H.L. Mencken
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.
Mencken, H.L.
When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever... I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
Mencken, H.L.
Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex instinct which makes women seem beautiful, which they are once in a blue moon, and men seem wise and brave, which they never are at all. Throttle it, denaturalize it, take it away, and human existence would be reduced to the prosaic, laborious, boresome, imbecile level of life in an anthill.
Mencken, H.L.
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
Mencken, H.L.
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
Mencken, H.L.
It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
Mencken, H.L.
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
Mencken, H.L.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
Mencken, H.L.
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
Mencken, H.L.
The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly sober as so many convicts in the death-house, but the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind.
Mencken, H.L.
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.
Mencken, H.L.
Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it; moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories.
Mencken, H.L.
Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma'ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.
Mencken, H.L.
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
Mencken, H.L.
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.
Mencken, H.L.
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
Mencken, H.L.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
Mencken, H.L.
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.
Mencken, H.L.