H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 16

• A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.

  H. L. Mencken

  Gentleman, Strikes, Provocation

  H.L. Mencken “A little book in C major”, Рипол Классик

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• 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

  Thinking, Racism, People

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• Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself--by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true.

  H. L. Mencken

  Kings, Animal, Men

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.128, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Life may not be exactly pleasant, but it is at least not dull. Heave yourself into Hell today, and you may miss, tomorrow or next day, another Scopes trial, or another War to End War, or perchance a rich and buxom widow with all her first husband's clothes. There are always more Hardings hatching. I advocate hanging on as long as possible.

  H. L. Mencken

  Husband, War, Next Day

  American Mercury, Apr. 1928

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• A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.

  H. L. Mencken

  Depressing, Prayer, Dark

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.13, Knopf

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• He who eats alone chokes alone.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dining Alone, Choke, Arabian

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• A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor

  H. L. Mencken

  Doctors, Political, Tin

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• School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence.

  H. L. Mencken

  Education, Believe, Learning

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.308, Vintage

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• America's biggest failure is its inability to take comedy seriously.

  H. L. Mencken

  America, Inability, Comedy

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• Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mother, Freedom, Law

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing". Book edited by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

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• I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, Individual, Knows

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• What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better. The former assumption, I believe is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Effort, Political

  H.L. MENCKEN (1958). “PREJUDICES A SELECTION”

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• It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

  H. L. Mencken

  Wise, Running, Wisdom

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.80, Knopf

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• The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy, shared in this disgrace.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, United States, World

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Diary of H. L. Mencken”, p.682, Vintage

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• Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

  H. L. Mencken

  Music, Baseball, Italian

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• Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sleep, Men, Imagination

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.23, Vintage

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• As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain. It is, I believe, the greatest of human inventions, and by far - much greater than Hell, the radio or the bichloride tablet.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Food, Long

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• It seems to me that you are better off, as a writer and as an American, in a small town than you'd be in New York. I thoroughly detest New York, though I have to go there very often.... Have you ever noticed that no American writer of any consequence lives in Manhattan? Dreiser tried it (after many years in the Bronx), but finally moved to California.

  H. L. Mencken

  New York, Years, California

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• The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Army, House

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.622, Vintage

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• Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Temptation, Weapons

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.620, Vintage

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• Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Faith, Freedom, Believe

  Prejudices, Third Series ch. 14 (1922)

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• Every lynching deprives its victim of his life without due process of law, and denies him an equal protection of the law. The States are charged with punishing all such invasions as the common rights of the citizens, but some of them have failed in their effort to do so, and others have not honestly tried. Meanwhile, lynchings continue, and though they do not increase in number, they show some tendency to increase in savagery.

  H. L. Mencken

  Rights, Lynching, Law

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• Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

  H. L. Mencken

  Witty, Powerful, Humorous

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• The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dog

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• Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.

  H. L. Mencken

  Women, Enough Time, Would Be

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