Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Book of Revelation has all the authority, in these theological uplands, of military orders in time of war. The people turn… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth-and youth is the time of real tragedy-that the young are thrown mainly… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The plain people, hereafter as in the past, will continue to make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Probably the worst thing that has happened in America in my time is the decay of confidence in the courts. No one… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A man who is an agnostic by inheritance, so that he doesn't remember any time that he wasn't, has almost no hatred… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A sound American is simply one who has put out of his mind all doubts and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I have lived in one house in Baltimore for nearly forty-five years. It has changed in that time, as I have -… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surmounted the imbecility of religion's ally,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
