Quote

When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.

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
Thinking
Anything
Child
Inarticulate
Best
Dies
Vaguely
Music
Words
Printed
Ideas
Idea
Properly
Children
Language
English
Always
Speak
Shall
Men
Beautiful
Probably
Describable
Think
Form
Written
Beset

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all men are just as easy to fool.
H. L. Mencken
Image
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The worst government is the most moral.
H. L. Mencken
Image
No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
H. L. Mencken
Image
It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but rather a sign of decay, as in the United States today. The state, indeed, is but one of the devices that a really healthy community sets up to manage its affairs.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later for another thing, they die earlier.
H. L. Mencken
Image
No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
H. L. Mencken