H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 24

• The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Book, Reading

  "A little book in C major".

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• No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Suicide, Dream

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• Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Moon, Thinking

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• Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sorry, Wife

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• The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Men, Liberty

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• Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may be that we are all actually freezing hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent.

  H. L. Mencken

  Intelligent, Men, Stupidity

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.213, Knopf

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• Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Errors, Literature

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.434, Vintage

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• How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Laughter, Shoes

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

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• Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.

  H. L. Mencken

  Jealousy, Looks, Observers

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• Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.

  H. L. Mencken

  Heaven, Tickets, Agnostic

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• The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, War, Mean

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.22, Knopf

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• The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.

  H. L. Mencken

  Lonely, Truth, Honesty

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.15, Vintage

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• A man who is an agnostic by inheritance, so that he doesn't remember any time that he wasn't, has almost no hatred for the religious.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Men, Hatred

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• Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Character, Men, Honor

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.111, Vintage

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• What we need in this country is a general improvement in eating. We have the best raw materials in the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but most of them are ruined in the process of preparing them for the table.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, World, Tables

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• How do they taste? They taste like more.

  H. L. Mencken

  Food, Cooking, Taste

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• In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Hero, Soldier

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• Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Money, Husband

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• Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it--an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking down of ions, electrons and molecules, an unshakable determination to tell it all. One is amazed by the mole-like diligence of the man, and no less by his exasperating disregard for the ease of his readers.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Determination, Writing

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• A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it- this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy.

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Education, Dream

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.303, Vintage

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• You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Blow, Trying

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• Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.

  H. L. Mencken

  Work, Men, Eggs

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.33, Knopf

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• If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

  H. L. Mencken

  Girl, Memories, Kindness

  Smart Set, Dec. 1921

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• It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Average, Law

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• I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, Men, Drunk

  Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

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