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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
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
Pieces
Fiction
Less
Music
Lascivious
Comforting
Piece
Poetry
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
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
The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.
H. L. Mencken
The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance he offers absolution.
H. L. Mencken
Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
H. L. Mencken
The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all men are just as easy to fool.
H. L. Mencken
High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
H. L. Mencken
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
H. L. Mencken
People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?
H. L. Mencken
I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
H. L. Mencken
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. Mencken
Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.
H. L. Mencken
Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
H. L. Mencken
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
H. L. Mencken
American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
H. L. Mencken
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
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
H. L. Mencken
Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.
H. L. Mencken
Taxation, for example, is eternally lively it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories
H. L. Mencken
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
H. L. Mencken
Nature abhors a moron.
H. L. Mencken
