H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 20

• I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.

  H. L. Mencken

  Cities, Paris, Giving

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• One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

  H. L. Mencken

  Horse, Laughter, Anger

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

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• There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Dull, Subjects

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• Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hands, Play, Toys

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.281, Vintage

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• When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.

  H. L. Mencken

  Fun, Artist, Thinking

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• A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.

  H. L. Mencken

  Husband, Men, Years

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• What makes philosophy so tedious is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who soughtto cure a slight hyperacidity by prescribing a carload of burned oyster-shells.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Philosophy, Philosophical

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.617, Vintage

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• Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Relationship, Marriage

  Chrestomathy (1949) ch. 30

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• The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mother, Science, Effort

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.248, Knopf

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• Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Experience, Poor

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• There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.

  H. L. Mencken

  Promise, Politician, Pot

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• Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Party, Choices

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.159, Vintage

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• The acting that one sees upon the stage does not show how human beings comport themselves in crises, but how actors think they ought to. It is thus, like poetry and religion, a device for gladdening the heart with what is palpably not true.

  H. L. Mencken

  Heart, Thinking, Acting

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• Consider him in his highest incarnation: the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and, in large part, untrue. His whole professional activity is circumscribed by the prejudices, vanities and avarices of his university trustees, i.e., a committee of soap-boilers, nail manufacturers, bank-directors and politicians. The moment he offends these vermin he is undone. He cannot so much as think aloud without running a risk of having them fan his pantaloons.

  H. L. Mencken

  Education, Running, Thinking

  "Minority Report".

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• The feelings that Beethoven put into his music were the feelings of a god. There was something olympian in his snarls and rages, and there was a touch of hellfire in his mirth.

  H. L. Mencken

  Music, Feelings, Mirth

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.524, Vintage

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• The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Character, Men, Ideas

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• The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dog, Men, Average

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.86, Knopf

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• The average woman must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain disdain; he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot help feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is their father.

  H. L. Mencken

  Husband, Children, Father

  H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.42, 谷月社

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• My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

  H. L. Mencken

  Science, Race, Ideas

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.20, Knopf

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• The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket.

  H. L. Mencken

  Law, Pockets, Faces

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• There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.

  H. L. Mencken

  Business, Simple Solutions, Neat And Tidy

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.443, Vintage

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• All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.

  H. L. Mencken

  Winning, People, Influence

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• The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Religion, Atheism

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.80, Vintage

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• The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.

  H. L. Mencken

  Theatre, Done, Said

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

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• Don't tell me what delusion he entertains regarding God, or what mountebank he follows in politics, or what he springs from, or what he submits to from his wife. Simply tell me how he makes his living. It is the safest and surest of all known tests. A man who gets his board and lodging on this ball in an ignominious way is inevitably an ignominious man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Spring, Work, Character

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.20, Vintage

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