Life Quotes by H. L. Mencken

40 Life quotes by H. L. Mencken

Life is shown as a mix of danger, deeply, and criticism. The quotes mock people who chase fame by talking and say that sex makes life interesting. They also claim art helps young people escape for everyday worries today.

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Life is a dead-end street.

H. L. Mencken

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[Art is] an attempt to escape from life.

H. L. Mencken

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Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel.

H. L. Mencken

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Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.

H. L. Mencken

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The only way to success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the mob

H. L. Mencken

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Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

H. L. Mencken

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What the meaning of human life may be I don't know: I incline to suspect that it has none.

H. L. Mencken

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School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence.

H. L. Mencken

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Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull

H. L. Mencken

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There are two impossibilities in life: "just one drink" and "an honest politician."

H. L. Mencken

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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…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a…

H. L. Mencken

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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

H. L. Mencken

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The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.

H. L. Mencken

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The average man gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him.

H. L. Mencken

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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.

H. L. Mencken

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My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought..

H. L. Mencken

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No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child…

H. L. Mencken

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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a…

H. L. Mencken

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Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic…

H. L. Mencken

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Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues,…

H. L. Mencken

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To large numbers of American citizens life in certain parts of the country becomes intolerably hazardous. They may be seized on any…

H. L. Mencken

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I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. There is in every living creature an…

H. L. Mencken

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A living language is like a man suffering incessantly from small hemorrhages, and what it needs above all else is constant transactions…

H. L. Mencken

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Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex instinct which makes women seem beautiful,…

H. L. Mencken

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Every lynching deprives its victim of his life without due process of law, and denies him an equal protection of the law.…

H. L. Mencken

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In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.

H. L. Mencken

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“Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of a dilemma.”

H. L. Mencken

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What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not…

H. L. Mencken

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The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each…

H. L. Mencken

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You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.

H. L. Mencken

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The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules-that it is a living and breathing thing with…

H. L. Mencken

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Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it…

H. L. Mencken

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Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that…

H. L. Mencken

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Women decide the larger questions of life correctly and quickly, not because they are lucky guessers, not because they are divinely inspired,…

H. L. Mencken

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There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever…

H. L. Mencken

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Don't tell me what delusion he entertains regarding God, or what mountebank he follows in politics, or what he springs from, or…

H. L. Mencken

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More by H. L. Mencken

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

H. L. Mencken

A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.

H. L. Mencken

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

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

Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead.

H. L. Mencken

The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

H. L. Mencken

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

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

H. L. Mencken

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

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

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

H. L. Mencken

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

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

Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.

H. L. Mencken

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