 |
Action(s)
|
|
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Age
|
|
|
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Agreement
|
|
|
On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Alcohol/Alcoholism
|
|
|
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Assumptions
|
|
|
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Authors & Writing
|
|
|
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Belief
|
|
|
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
|
The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Certainty
|
|
|
It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Character
|
|
|
No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian, his true meannesses, his true imbecilities, to his friends, or even to his wife. Honest autobiography is therefore a contradiction in terms: the moment a man considers himself, even in petto, he tries to gild and fresco himself. Thus a man's wife, however realistic her view of him, always flatters him in the end, for the worst she sees in him is appreciably better, by the time she sees it, than what is actually there.
-H. L. Mencken, The Art Eternal, "New York Evening Mail, 1918"
|
|
Choice
|
|
|
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Class
|
|
|
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Common Sense
|
|
|
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Communism
|
|
|
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Conscience
|
|
|
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
|
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Contraception, Birth Control
|
|
|
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 and chemistry.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Creation
|
|
|
Imagine the Creator as a stand up comedian - and at once the world becomes explicable.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Crime
|
|
|
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Criticism
|
|
|
It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
|
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Cruelty
|
|
|
The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Cynicism
|
|
|
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
|
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
Deception/Lying
|
|
|
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
-H. L. Mencken
|
Books by and about H. L. Mencken