Quote

In Baltimore, soft crabs are always fried (or broiled) in the altogether, with maybe a small jock-strap of bacon added.

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
Soft
Jocks
Cooking
Crabs
Food
Fried
Small
Baltimore
Maybe
Bacon
Always
Altogether
Culinary
Strap
Added
Jock

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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
When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.
H. L. Mencken
Image
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor
H. L. Mencken
Image
No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The more noisy Negro leaders, by depicting all whites as natural and implacable enemies to their race, have done it a great disservice. Large numbers of whites who were formerly very friendly to it, and willing to go to great lengths to help it, are now resentful and suspicious.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
H. L. Mencken
Image
One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
H. L. Mencken
Image
If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
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
Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.
H. L. Mencken
Image
What is the professor's function? To pass on to numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and largely untrue.
H. L. Mencken
Image
If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse.
H. L. Mencken