H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 25

• It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.

  H. L. Mencken

  Adventure, Mind, Cynicism

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• I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed shelves of yesterday... This borrowing and refurbishing of shop-worn goods, as a matter of fact, is the invariable habit of traders in ideas, at all times and everywhere. It is not, however, that all the conceivable human notions have been thought out; it is simply, to be quite honest, that the sort of men who volunteer to think out new ones seldom, if ever, have wind enough for a full day's work.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Wind

  H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.2, 谷月社

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• In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sympathy, Rogues, Fool

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.616, Vintage

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• The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.

  H. L. Mencken

  Music, Symphony, Mind

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• Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.

  H. L. Mencken

  Strong, Fighting, Fate

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.160, Vintage

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• Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Philosophy, Trying, World

  H. L. Mencken (2003). “Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.92, See Sharp Press

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• Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Book, America

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• Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.

  H. L. Mencken

  Race, Average, Punishment

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• It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world, or to ladle out its normal doses of bad medicine and worse law, than it takes to operate a taxicab or fry a pan of fish.

  H. L. Mencken

  Law, Medicine, Everyday

  H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.9, 谷月社

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• Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.

  H. L. Mencken

  Get Well, Fool, Patient

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• It costs more to maintain ten vices than one virtue.

  H. L. Mencken

  Vices, Cost, Virtue

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• I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf; it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.

  H. L. Mencken

  Taken, Golf, Hair

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• Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.

  H. L. Mencken

  Crazy, Actors, Wonder

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• I have lived in one house in Baltimore for nearly forty-five years. It has changed in that time, as I have - but somehow it still remains the same. No conceivable decorator's masterpiece could give me the same ease. It is as much a part of me as my two hands. If I had to leave it I'd be as certainly crippled as if I lost a leg.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hands, Years, Two

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• Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Animal, Men

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

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• Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sake, the lust to make the world intolerable. Its habitat is the United States. Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty as it hates truth.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hate, Race, Lust

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.576, Vintage

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• I devoured hot-dogs in Baltimore 'way back in 1886, and they were then very far from newfangled...They contained precisely the same rubber, indigestible pseudo-sausages that millions of Americans now eat, and they leaked the same flabby, puerile mustard. Their single point of difference lay in the fact that their covers were honest German Wecke made of wheat-flour baked to crispiness, and not the soggy rolls prevailing today, of ground acorns, plaster-of-Paris, flecks of bath-sponge, and atmospheric air all compact.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dog, Food, Differences

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• Kipling, the grandson of a Methodist preacher, reveals the tin-pot evangelist with increasing clarity as youth and its ribaldries pass away and he falls back upon his fundamentals.

  H. L. Mencken

  Fall, Passing Away, Tin

  H. L. Mencken (1917). “A Book of Prefaces”

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• History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Kings, Men, History

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• Chopin--Two embalmers at work upon a minor poetthe scent of tuberosesAutumn rain.

  H. L. Mencken

  Music, Rain, Two

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• Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. ... The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard them from the consequences of their vices.

  H. L. Mencken

  Science, Men, Hygiene

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.269, Cosimo, Inc.

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• As long as the Southern colleges have revivals on their campuses and students get converted to Methodism and join the YMCA and are accepted as gentlemen, it will be impossible to think of the South as civilized...The educated folk of the Old South took theology lightly, and religion to them was hardly more than a charming ritual, useful on solemn occassions.

  H. L. Mencken

  College, Thinking, Ymca

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• Writing books is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy.

  H. L. Mencken

  Success, Crazy, Book

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• At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.

  H. L. Mencken

  Eight, Light, Nine

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• Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

  H. L. Mencken

  Wisdom, Men, Literature

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