H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 31

• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah

  H. L. Mencken

  Music, Home, Musician

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• Setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all, it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what is commonly regarded as an excess of sin is very much more admirable than the minority distinguished by an excess of virtue. My experience of the world has taught me that the average wine-bibbler is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist, and that the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge, and that the worst white-slave trader of my acquaintance is a decenter man than the best vice crusader.

  H. L. Mencken

  Wine, Character, Men

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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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• Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.

  H. L. Mencken

  Marriage, Husband, Men

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• Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a messiah with a bloody nose.

  H. L. Mencken

  People, Noses, May

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• I am, in fact, the complete anti-Messiah, and detest converts almost as much as I detest missionaries. My writings, such as they are, have had only one purpose: to attain for H. L. Mencken that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Giving, Feelings

  "For the Defense Written for the Associated Press, for use in my obituary" by H. L. Mencken, November 20, 1940.

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Drink, Ifs

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• Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.

  H. L. Mencken

  Comforting, Fiction, Pieces

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.449, Vintage

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• The notion that anything is gained by fixing a language in a groove is cherished only by pedants.

  H. L. Mencken

  Fixing, Pedants, Language

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “American Language”, p.607, Knopf

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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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• 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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• The learned are seldom pretty fellows, and in many cases their appearance tends to discourage a love of study in the young.

  H. L. Mencken

  Study, Appearance, Cases

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• The art of writing, like the art of love, runs all the way from a kind of routine hard to distinguish from piling bricks to a kind of frenzy closely related to delirium tremens.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Art, Writing

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.27, Knopf

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• The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.

  H. L. Mencken

  Simple, Argument, Problem

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

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• 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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• No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Men, America

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• I have little belief in human progress. The human race is incurably idiotic. It will never be happy.

  H. L. Mencken

  Race, Progress, Littles

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• The scent of frying astronomers long ago ceased to ascend to Yahweh.

  H. L. Mencken

  Long Ago, Atheism, Yahweh

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