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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 34

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

[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.

[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.

Men, Democracy, Sound

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

The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it.

Writing, Ideas, Psychics

Love is photogenic. It needs darkness room to develop

Funny, Love Is, Darkness

What are the hallmarks of a competent writer of fiction? The first, it seems to me, is that he should be immensely interested in human beings, and have an eye sharp enough to see into them, and a hand clever enough to draw them as they are. The second is that he should be able to set them in imaginary situations which display the contents of their psyches effectively, and so carry his reader swiftly and pleasantly from point to point of what is called a good story.

Clever, Eye, Psych

The American Mercury Magazine, p. 136, May 1933.

Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another "Rosenkavailer."

Jobs, Work, Writing

The plain people, hereafter as in the past, will continue to make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do is to follow after it, haltingly, and not often with much insight into it.

Past, People, Language

H.L. Mencken (1965). “the American Language”

As long as the Southern colleges have revivals on their campuses and students get converted to Methodism and join the YMCA and are accepted as gentlemen, it will be impossible to think of the South as civilized...The educated folk of the Old South took theology lightly, and religion to them was hardly more than a charming ritual, useful on solemn occassions.

College, Thinking, Ymca

Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.

Quotation Marks, Next, Grammar

H.L. Mencken (2012). “American Language Supplement 2”, p.593, Knopf

The only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do.

Jobs, Men, Citizens

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.

Christian, Character, Men

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

The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.

Believe, Ignorance, Origin Of Life

There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.

Hallucinations, Sound, Tests

Prejudices, Third Series ch. 3 (1922)

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.

Men, Thinking, Quality

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.87, Cosimo, Inc.

A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.

Men, Half, Priests

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.242, Knopf

I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom ... the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.

Men, Thinking, Want

Letters of H. L. Mencken edited by Guy J. Forgue (p. xiii)., 1961.

Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws.... There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased -- freedom from the despotism of the majority.

Men, Law, Two

Lapham's Quarterly, Alexander Hamilton, Ezra Pound, Richard Hofstadter, Thomas Jefferson (2016). “Alexander Hamilton: Lapham's Quarterly - Special Issue”, p.124, Pronoun

The great achievement of liberal Protestantism was to make God boring.

Achievement, Boring, Great Achievement

To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's fellow men, and (c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am - a man of my peculiar weakness, vanities, appetites, and aversions - can be so happy as he can be in the United States.

Country, Men, Vanity

"On Being An American". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1922.

The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.

Music, Singing, May

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.545, Vintage

The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

Wise, Real, Men

The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.

Laughing, United States, Speech

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Diary of H. L. Mencken”, p.635, Vintage

One yearns unspeakably for a composer who gives out his pair of honest themes, and then develops them unashamed, and then hangs a brisk coda to them, and then shuts up.

Giving, Pairs, Honest

H. L. Mencken (2000). “H.L. Mencken's Smart Set Criticism”, p.99, Regnery Publishing

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

Believe, Belief, Be Good

It is more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents.

Funny, Life, Blessed

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

Funny, Music, House

1925 Letter to Isaac Goldberg.

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