H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 34

• I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom ... the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Want

  Letters of H. L. Mencken edited by Guy J. Forgue (p. xiii)., 1961.

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• It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Quality

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.87, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors; they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.

  H. L. Mencken

  Women, Sailor, Capes

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.40, Vintage

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• What are the hallmarks of a competent writer of fiction? The first, it seems to me, is that he should be immensely interested in human beings, and have an eye sharp enough to see into them, and a hand clever enough to draw them as they are. The second is that he should be able to set them in imaginary situations which display the contents of their psyches effectively, and so carry his reader swiftly and pleasantly from point to point of what is called a good story.

  H. L. Mencken

  Clever, Eye, Psych

  The American Mercury Magazine, p. 136, May 1933.

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• One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Long, Events, Should

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.276, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.

  H. L. Mencken

  Atheist, Home, Atheism

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• The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Music, House

  1925 Letter to Isaac Goldberg.

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• The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dream, Women, Giving

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

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• There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hallucinations, Sound, Tests

  Prejudices, Third Series ch. 3 (1922)

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• The plain people, hereafter as in the past, will continue to make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do is to follow after it, haltingly, and not often with much insight into it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Past, People, Language

  H.L. Mencken (1965). “the American Language”

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• The prophesying business is like writing fugues; it is fatal to every one save the man of absolute genius.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Men, Genius

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

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• The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Ideas, Psychics

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• Love is photogenic. It needs darkness room to develop

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Love Is, Darkness

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• One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.

  H. L. Mencken

  Knowing, Agnostic, Journalism

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

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• This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high attainments in their specialties-for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and Osler-men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had heard them stated.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dream, Teaching, Passion

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

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• The only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do.

  H. L. Mencken

  Jobs, Men, Citizens

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• The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Music, Singing, May

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.545, Vintage

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• The late William Jennings Bryan, L.L.D., always had one great advantage in controversy; he was never burdened with an understanding of his opponent's case.

  H. L. Mencken

  Punishment, Understanding, Opponents

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• It is more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Life, Blessed

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• Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.

  H. L. Mencken

  Quotation Marks, Next, Grammar

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “American Language Supplement 2”, p.593, Knopf

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• Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws.... There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased -- freedom from the despotism of the majority.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Law, Two

  Lapham's Quarterly, Alexander Hamilton, Ezra Pound, Richard Hofstadter, Thomas Jefferson (2016). “Alexander Hamilton: Lapham's Quarterly - Special Issue”, p.124, Pronoun

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• To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.

  H. L. Mencken

  Happiness, Writing, Men

  H.L. Mencken (1917). “A book of prefaces”, p.85, Рипол Классик

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• Never underestimate the bad taste of the American public

  H. L. Mencken

  Taste, Underestimate, Never Underestimate

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• Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another "Rosenkavailer."

  H. L. Mencken

  Jobs, Work, Writing

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• The great achievement of liberal Protestantism was to make God boring.

  H. L. Mencken

  Achievement, Boring, Great Achievement

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