Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman. — 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
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The university president who cashiered every professor unwilling to support Woodrow Wilson for the first vacancy in the Trinity. . . . — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege? — 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
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and… — 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
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
Two simple principles lie at the bottom of the whole matter, and they may be precipitated into two rules. The first is… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image