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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 24

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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

Freedom, Average, Law

So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free association with one who is.

Men, Knowing, Prejudice

It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.

Adventure, Mind, Cynicism

I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed shelves of yesterday... This borrowing and refurbishing of shop-worn goods, as a matter of fact, is the invariable habit of traders in ideas, at all times and everywhere. It is not, however, that all the conceivable human notions have been thought out; it is simply, to be quite honest, that the sort of men who volunteer to think out new ones seldom, if ever, have wind enough for a full day's work.

Men, Thinking, Wind

H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.2, 谷月社

The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.

Agnostic, Ecstatic, Knows

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.89, Vintage

In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue.

Sympathy, Rogues, Fool

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.616, Vintage

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

Freedom, Justice, Bears

"Prejudices: Third Series".

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.

Happiness, Men, Religion

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.163, Vintage

The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.

Music, Symphony, Mind

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.

Strong, Fighting, Fate

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.160, Vintage

I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.

Book, Men, Drunk

Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

Birthday, Lying, History

I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf; it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.

Taken, Golf, Hair

Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sake, the lust to make the world intolerable. Its habitat is the United States. Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty as it hates truth.

Hate, Race, Lust

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.576, Vintage

Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.

Art, Animal, Men

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.617, Vintage

Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.

Philosophy, Trying, World

H. L. Mencken (2003). “Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.92, See Sharp Press

I devoured hot-dogs in Baltimore 'way back in 1886, and they were then very far from newfangled...They contained precisely the same rubber, indigestible pseudo-sausages that millions of Americans now eat, and they leaked the same flabby, puerile mustard. Their single point of difference lay in the fact that their covers were honest German Wecke made of wheat-flour baked to crispiness, and not the soggy rolls prevailing today, of ground acorns, plaster-of-Paris, flecks of bath-sponge, and atmospheric air all compact.

Dog, Food, Differences

It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world, or to ladle out its normal doses of bad medicine and worse law, than it takes to operate a taxicab or fry a pan of fish.

Law, Medicine, Everyday

H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.9, 谷月社

Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.

Crazy, Actors, Wonder

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.

Race, Average, Punishment

Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant.

Christian, Book, America

I have lived in one house in Baltimore for nearly forty-five years. It has changed in that time, as I have - but somehow it still remains the same. No conceivable decorator's masterpiece could give me the same ease. It is as much a part of me as my two hands. If I had to leave it I'd be as certainly crippled as if I lost a leg.

Hands, Years, Two

Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull

Sex, Would Be, Dull

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Second Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.464, Vintage

It costs more to maintain ten vices than one virtue.

Vices, Cost, Virtue

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor

Punishment, May, Morality

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