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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 27

All Quotes Achievement Adultery Adventure Age Alcohol Arguing Art Atheism Atheist Beer Belief Business Change Character Children Choices College Comedy Common Sense Communism Conscience Conspiracy Cooking Country Courage Criticism Critics Culture Cynicism Death Democracy Determination Devil Difficulty Dignity Doubt Drinking Dying Earth Education Effort Ethics Evil Exercise Faith Fear Feelings Fighting Food Free Speech Freedom Funny Genius Giving God Golf Happiness Hate Heart Heaven Hell History Home Honesty Honor House Humanity Husband Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Intelligence Intuition Journalism Joy Judging Justice Kissing Knowledge Language Laughter Learning Liberty Life Literature Logic Love Lying Marriage Military Money Moon Morality Music Nature Office Originality Passion Past Patriotism Peace Personality Philosophy Politics Pot Poverty Prejudice Progress Propaganda Quality Quitting Reading Religion Respect Revolution Running Safety School Science Science And Religion Skins Slavery Society Son Sports Struggle Stupidity Style Success Suffering Sunday Sympathy Teaching Temptation Time Today Tragedy Trust Truth Virtue Voting Waiting War Water Weakness Wife Wisdom Work Writing Youth

Every man is his own hell.

Every man is his own hell.

Men, Literature, Hell

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

It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth-and youth is the time of real tragedy-that the young are thrown mainly with adults they do not quite respect.

Real, Tragedy, Adults

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.308, Vintage

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

Drama, Gay, Golf

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.279, Cosimo, Inc.

Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim that every citizen is, by nature, a traitor, a libertine, and a scoundrel. In order to dissuade him from his evil-doing the police power is extended until it surpasses anything ever heard of in the oriental monarchies of antiquity.

Order, Law, Evil

H. L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.45, Read Books Ltd

There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.

Death, Animal, Offering

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.86, Knopf

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.

Trust, Believe, Men

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.10, Vintage

One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.

Liars, Lying, Eye

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.325, Vintage

Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality.

Hygiene, Medicine, Morality

Prejudices Types of Men

The Book of Revelation has all the authority, in these theological uplands, of military orders in time of war. The people turn to it for light upon all their problems, spiritual and secular.

Spiritual, Military, War

By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something about everything; he knew a great deal about everything.

Philosophy, Knowledge, Science

Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.

Race, Progress, Whiskers

"A Book of Burlesques". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1916.

Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.

Government, Trying, May

It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.

Country, Art, Society

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.562, Vintage

I'm ombibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all.

Drink, Enjoy, Alcoholics

I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.

Teacher, Determination, School

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.260, Cosimo, Inc.

The so-called religious organizations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of the inferior man against his betters.

Religious, War, Teaching

The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.

Government, Support, Liberty

Science is unflinchingly deterministic, and it has begun to force its determinism into morals. On some shining tomorrow a psychoanalyst may be put into the box to prove that perjury is simply a compulsion neurosis, like beating time with the foot at a concert or counting the lampposts along the highway.

Feet, Shining, May

H. L. Mencken (1924). “Prejudices Fourth Series”

The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.

Superstitions, Belief, Idiot

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.121, Knopf

Youth, though it may lack knowledge, is certainly not devoid of intelligence; it sees through shams with sharp and terrible eyes.

Eye, May, Youth

Everyman is thoroughly happy twice in his life, just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one.

Life, True Love, First Love

What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.

Nature, Forgotten, Danger

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.347, Vintage

No married woman ever trusts her husband absolutely, nor does she ever act as if she did trust him. Her utmost confidence is as wary as an American pickpocket's confidence that the policeman on the beat will stay bought.

Trust, Husband, Women

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.267, Cosimo, Inc.

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.

People, Shy, Literature

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

Believe, Men, Ideas

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.10, Vintage

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