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How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
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
Make
Laughter
Cockroach
Life
Laugh
Pebble
Laughing
Cockroaches
Takes
Spaghetti
Suffering
Pebbles
Woman
Shoe
Littles
Unbearable
Little
Shoes
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.
H. L. Mencken
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.
H. L. Mencken
The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
H. L. Mencken
If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.
H. L. Mencken
The worst government is the most moral.
H. L. Mencken
The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
H. L. Mencken
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
H. L. Mencken
The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes the worst cigars.
H. L. Mencken
I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
H. L. Mencken
The first kiss is stolen by the man the last is begged by the woman.
H. L. Mencken
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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
Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
H. L. Mencken
A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.
H. L. Mencken
Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may be that we are all actually freezing hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent.
H. L. Mencken
Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
H. L. Mencken
The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.
H. L. Mencken
Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.
H. L. Mencken
The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
H. L. Mencken
I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.
H. L. Mencken
