Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
H. L. Mencken
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Come
Late
Idle
Nothing
Simply
Offering
Many
Animal
Occupation
People
Waiting
Curse
State
Hour
Hours
Animals
Death
Worse
States
Soon
Senility
More quotes by 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
Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.
H. L. Mencken
People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.
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
Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
H. L. Mencken
[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
H. L. Mencken
I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.
H. L. Mencken
Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguard bad work.
H. L. Mencken
If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H. L. Mencken
Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.
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
No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.
H. L. Mencken
I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
H. L. Mencken
Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
H. L. Mencken
The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
H. L. Mencken
The essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a given subject sufficiently well to teach it is usually unwilling to do so.
H. L. Mencken
One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
H. L. Mencken
One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
H. L. Mencken
To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind of mind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin.
H. L. Mencken
Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
H. L. Mencken