Quote

The best years are the forties after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.

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
Villainy
Maximum
Forty
Fifty
Begins
Best
Years
Deteriorate
Men
Forties

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Love is photogenic. It needs darkness room to develop
H. L. Mencken
Image
Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I believe that it should be perfectly lawful to print even things that outrage the pruderies and prejudices of the general, so long as any honest minority, however small, wants to read them. The remedy of the majority is not prohibition, but avoidance.
H. L. Mencken
Image
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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
Image
[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I'm ombibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
H. L. Mencken
Image
On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
H. L. Mencken
Image
What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
H. L. Mencken
Image
[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
Image
The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
H. L. Mencken
Image
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
H. L. Mencken