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Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.

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
Practicals
World
Practical
Correct
Esteemed
Heat
Spelling
Arts
Grammar
Indeed
Agony
Deep
Neck
Art
Necks

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The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful next time.
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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.
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The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.
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To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
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The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
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One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.
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Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.
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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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Christian endeavor is notoriously hard on female pulchritude.
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The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world.
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