H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 30

• The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Strong, Hate

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• A living language is like a man suffering incessantly from small hemorrhages, and what it needs above all else is constant transactions of new blood from other tongues. The day the gates go up, that day it begins to die.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Blood, Suffering

  "The 100 best nonfiction books: No 49 - The American Language by HL Mencken (1919)" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 9, 2017.

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• A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.

  H. L. Mencken

  Exercise, Men, Play

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• A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dog, Fleas, Professors

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

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• Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.

  H. L. Mencken

  Law, Atmosphere, Culture

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.360, Knopf

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• Only a jackass ever talks over his affairs with a woman, whether she be his sweetheart, wife, or sister, or mother.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mother, Women, Wife

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• The Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry: It is a mellifluous and emotional statement of the obviously not true. The men who fought for self-determination at Gettysburg were not the Federals but the Confederates.

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, Determination, War

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• Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.

  H. L. Mencken

  Drink, Ifs

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• I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Government, Democracy

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.8, Vintage

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• Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas

  H. L. Mencken

  Ideas, Belief, Politician

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• Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.

  H. L. Mencken

  Wise, Men, Foolish Man

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• If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Harry Truman, Body

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• I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that there may be some truth in it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Children, Years, May

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.19, Knopf

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• The townspeople are morons, yokels, peasants and genus homo boobiensis...surrounded by gaping primates from the upland vallies.

  H. L. Mencken

  Modern Life, Primates, Peasants

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• The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.

  H. L. Mencken

  Thinking, Religion, Trying

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

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• Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

  H. L. Mencken

  Work, Temptation, Body

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• Life is a dead-end street.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Dead Ends, Streets

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• The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible; it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.

  H. L. Mencken

  Catholic, Littles, Superstitions

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• Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

  H. L. Mencken

  Husband, Good Husband

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• What I got in Sunday school ... was simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith was full of palpable absurdities, and the Christian God preposterous.... The act of worship, as carried on by Christians, seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling. It involves groveling before a being who, if he really exists, deserves to be denounced instead of respected.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, School, Sunday

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• When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Goodbye, Farewell

  Baltimore Evening Sun, June 12, 1922.

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• All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will be full of bitterness, and that most of it will be caused by religion. I count Prohibition as a part of religion, for it has surely become so in the United States. The Prohibitionists, seeing all their other arguments destroyed by the logic of events, have fallen back upon the mystical doctrine that God is somehow on their side, and that opposing them thus takes on the character of blasphemy.

  H. L. Mencken

  Character, Political, Presidential

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• The instant I reach Heaven, I'm going to speak to God very sharply.

  H. L. Mencken

  Heaven, Speak, Instant

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I am never much interested in the effects of what I write....I seldom read with any attention the reviews of my...books. Two times out of three I know something about the reviewer, and in very few cases have I any respect for his judgments. Thus his praise, if he praises me, leaves me unmoved. I can't recall any review that has even influenced me in the slightest. I live in sort of a vacuum, and I suspect that most other writers do, too. It is hard to imagine one of the great ones paying any serious attention to contemporary opinion.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, Writing, Two

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• The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation.

  H. L. Mencken

  Education, Intelligent, Men

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

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