Quote

If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.

H. L. Mencken

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Jealous
Plainly
Superior
Aristotle
Superiors
Beethoven
Image
Bodily
Average
Perish
Made
Eager
Men
Frame
Superiority

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties
H. L. Mencken
Image
A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it- this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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
Image
The only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I believe that it should be perfectly lawful to print even things that outrage the pruderies and prejudices of the general, so long as any honest minority, however small, wants to read them. The remedy of the majority is not prohibition, but avoidance.
H. L. Mencken
Image
School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.
H. L. Mencken
Image
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
H. L. Mencken
Image
...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night.
H. L. Mencken
Image
To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
H. L. Mencken
Image
If there were only three women left in the world, two of them would immediately convene a court-martial to try the other one.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
H. L. Mencken