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A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Political
Campaign
Best
Campaigns
Better
Thrown
Ever
National
Mass
Couple
Hangings
Heard
Baptism
Politics
Circus

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Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
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A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
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Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
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At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
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Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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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.
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The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
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The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.
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