H.L. Mencken Quotes

The notion that artists flourish upon adversity and misunderstanding, that they are able to function to the utmost in an atmosphere of indifference or hostility - this notion is nine-tenths nonsense.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said is that its cosmetic effect is good.

Of all forms of visible otherworldliness, it seems to me, the Gothic is at once the most logical and the most beautiful. It reaches up magnificently-and a good half of it is palpably useless.

One yearns unspeakably for a composer who gives out his pair of honest themes, and then develops them unashamed, and then hangs a brisk coda to them, and then shuts up.

If there were only three women left in the world, two of them would immediately convene a court-martial to try the other one.

Great artists are modest almost as seldom as they are faithful to their wives.

High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.

Citizenship in New York is now worth no more than citizenship in Arkansas, for it is open to any applicant from the marshes of Bessarabia, and, still worse, to any applicant from Arkansas.

The only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do.

The late William Jennings Bryan, L.L.D., always had one great advantage in controversy; he was never burdened with an understanding of his opponent's case.

The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it.

Balloonists have an unsurpassed view of the scenery, but there is always the possibility that it may collide with them.

The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.

It seems to me that a great university ought to have room in it for men subscribing to every sort of idea that is currently prevalent

Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.

The Book of Revelation has all the authority, in these theological uplands, of military orders in time of war. The people turn to it for light upon all their problems, spiritual and secular.

The plain people, hereafter as in the past, will continue to make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do is to follow after it, haltingly, and not often with much insight into it.

One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.

In the long run all battles are lost, and so are all wars.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin or when he sees silver he looks for the cloud it lines. A wise happy person does the exact opposite.

Conscience is the accumulated sediment of ancestral faint- heartedness

Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.

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.

Morality is nothing but a struggle for safety

Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another "Rosenkavailer."

Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place

One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.

Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.

Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.

There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.

The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.

Democracy must be a sound scheme at bottom, else it would not survive such cruel strains.

I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.

I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.

The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful next time.

The Americans are the illegitimate children of the English.

He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.

It is more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse

I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.

Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.

In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.

I roll out of my couch every morning with the more agreeable expectations.

After all, the world is not our handiwork, and we are not responsible for what goes on in it, save within very narrow limits.

Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.

The central difficulty lies in the fact that all of the sciences have made such great progress during the last century that they have got quite beyond the reach of man

If I ever mary, it will be on a suddn impulse - as aman shoots himself

Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals

Yet the same thing happens to the notions of morality. They are devised, at the start, as measures of expediency, and then given divine sanction in order to lend them authority.