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In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
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
I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.
H. L. Mencken
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
H. L. Mencken
The more noisy Negro leaders, by depicting all whites as natural and implacable enemies to their race, have done it a great disservice. Large numbers of whites who were formerly very friendly to it, and willing to go to great lengths to help it, are now resentful and suspicious.
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 bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
H. L. Mencken
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
H. L. Mencken
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
H. L. Mencken
Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
H. L. Mencken
Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.
H. L. Mencken
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free association with one who is.
H. L. Mencken
Man is always looking for someone to boast to woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
H. L. Mencken
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
H. L. Mencken
I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.
H. L. Mencken
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together.
H. L. Mencken
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
H. L. Mencken
Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.
H. L. Mencken
Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.
H. L. Mencken
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H. L. Mencken
Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
H. L. Mencken
A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.
H. L. Mencken
