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Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.

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
Men
Pleasure
Enjoys
Getting
Fundamentally
Enjoy
Unlike
Sense
Eggs
Done
Relief
Work
Suppose
Kind
Satisfaction
Hens
Something
Delight
Laying

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[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.
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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.
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Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.
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[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.
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Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
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He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
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The real man lies in the depths of subconscious.
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A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor
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Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.
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What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.
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Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
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I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding.
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The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.
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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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Youth, though it may lack knowledge, is certainly not devoid of intelligence it sees through shams with sharp and terrible eyes.
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Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.
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The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
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Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
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Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.
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