H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 19

• The artist is not a reporter, but a Great Teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is, but as it ought to be.

  H. L. Mencken

  Teacher, Artist, World

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

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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

  God, Believe, Son

  H. L. Mencken (2012). “In Defense of Women”, p.47, Courier Corporation

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• [Thomas Henry] Huxley, I believe, was the greatest Englishman of the Nineteenth Century—perhaps the greatest Englishman of all time. When one thinks of him, one thinks inevitably of such men as Goethe and Aristotle. For in him there was that rich, incomparable blend of intelligence and character, of colossal knowledge and high adventurousness, of instinctive honesty and indomitable courage which appears in mankind only once in a blue moon. There have been far greater scientists, even in England, but there has never been a scientist who was a greater man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Honesty, Believe, Character

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• Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

  H. L. Mencken

  Humorous, Average, America

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• On the one hand, we may tell the truth, regardless of consequences, and on the other hand we may mellow it and sophisticate it to make it humane and tolerable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hands, May, Telling The Truth

  H. L. Mencken (1924). “Prejudices Fourth Series”

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• Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, America, Psychology

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• 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

  Men, Community, Healthy

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• The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly sober as so many convicts in the death-house, but the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind.

  H. L. Mencken

  Drinking, Men, Wind

  H. L. MENCKEN (1924). “PREJUDICES FOURTH SERIES”

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• Wherever I sit is the head of the table.

  H. L. Mencken

  Work, Tables

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• A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching self-delusion.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mother, Men, Self

  H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.7, 谷月社

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• The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Real, United States

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• Haste is of the devil. Slowness is of God.

  H. L. Mencken

  Devil, Haste, Slowness

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• The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes the worst cigars.

  H. L. Mencken

  Opinion, Cigar, Worst

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• No democratic delusion is more fatuous than that which holds that all men are capable of reason, and hence susceptible to conversion by evidence. If religions depended upon evidence for their prolongation, then all of them would collapse.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Reason, Democratic

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.353, Vintage

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• This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Struggle, Two

  "The Antichrist". Book by Friedrich Nietzsche, Introduction, 1895.

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• The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It is like trying to breedcattle with all cows and no bulls.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Class, Trying

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• One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

  H. L. Mencken

  Prejudice, Literature, World

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

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• A woman usually respects her father, but her view of her husband is mingled with contempt, for she is of course privy to the transparent devices by which she snared him.

  H. L. Mencken

  Husband, Father, Views

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.537, Vintage

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• If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Achieve, Prodigies

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.268, Vintage

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• Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.

  H. L. Mencken

  Real, Math, Bridges

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• A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Democracy, Liberty

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• Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Women, Hard Times, Law

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.40, Vintage

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• War may make a fool of man, but it by no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him, and its net effects are much like those of motherhood on women.

  H. L. Mencken

  Military, War, Mean

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.23, Knopf

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• Nietzsche, to the end of his days, remained a Russian pastor's son, and hence two-thirds of a Puritan; he erected his war upon holiness, toward the end, into a sort of holy war.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Philosophical, Son

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• The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.

  H. L. Mencken

  Secret, Brain, May

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