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If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
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Henry Louis Mencken
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Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.
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The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes the worst cigars.
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A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.
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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.
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It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
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In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.
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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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It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
H. L. Mencken
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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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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.
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It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready made.
H. L. Mencken
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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.
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It is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more nearly his own mind pulsates with the great ebbs and flows of popular delusion and emotion, the more admirably he performs his function. He may be an ass, but that is surely no demerit in a man paid to make asses of his customers.
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Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.
H. L. Mencken
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To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.
H. L. Mencken