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A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
H. L. Mencken
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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
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Henry Louis Mencken
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More quotes by H. L. Mencken
A living language is like a man suffering incessantly from small hemorrhages, and what it needs above all else is constant transactions of new blood from other tongues. The day the gates go up, that day it begins to die.
H. L. Mencken
We have had more brilliant Presidents than Cleveland, and one or two who were considerably more profound, but we have never had one, at least since Washington, whose fundamental character was solider and more admirable.
H. L. Mencken
The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.
H. L. Mencken
Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable.
H. L. Mencken
A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.
H. L. Mencken
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. Mencken
Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.
H. L. Mencken
In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue.
H. L. Mencken
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.
H. L. Mencken
[Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.
H. L. Mencken
A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
H. L. Mencken
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.
H. L. Mencken
For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.
H. L. Mencken
Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that it is not conscious of it for the duration of that moment it is happy. Thus a hog is always happier than a man, and a bacillus is happier than a hog
H. L. Mencken
Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world
H. L. Mencken
When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.
H. L. Mencken
Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.
H. L. Mencken
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
H. L. Mencken
Lying is not only excusable it is not only innocent it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it offers, life would become a mere syllogism and hence too metallic to be borne.
H. L. Mencken
It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
H. L. Mencken
