Quote

Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.

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
Life
Virtue
Fear
Death
Piety
Become
Weaknesses
Trying
Virtues
Make
Rage
Always
Weakness
Men
Atheism

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.
H. L. Mencken
Image
My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
H. L. Mencken
Image
At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The worshiper is the father of the gods.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.
H. L. Mencken
Image
No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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
Image
Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.
H. L. Mencken
Image
What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull
H. L. Mencken
Image
A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.
H. L. Mencken