The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood; there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Writing books is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The aim of poetry, it appears, is to fill the mind with lofty thoughts--not to give it joy, but to give it… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens--of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases… — 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
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
As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I am never much interested in the effects of what I write…I seldom read with any attention the reviews of my...books. Two… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What are the hallmarks of a competent writer of fiction? The first, it seems to me, is that he should be immensely… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity. — 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
