Balloonists have an unsurpassed view of the scenery, but there is always the possibility that it may collide with them. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What the meaning of human life may be I don't know: I incline to suspect that it has none. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a messiah with a bloody… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Youth, though it may lack knowledge, is certainly not devoid of intelligence; it sees through shams with sharp and terrible eyes. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
On the one hand, we may tell the truth, regardless of consequences, and on the other hand we may mellow it and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly conceivable that He… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
War may make a fool of man, but it by no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It seems to me that society usually wins. There are, to be sure, free spirits in the world, but their freedom, in… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Science is unflinchingly deterministic, and it has begun to force its determinism into morals. On some shining tomorrow a psychoanalyst may be… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is… — 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
It is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea, however fundamental it may seem to be,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style;… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Here the only genuine conflict is between true believers. Of a given text in Holy Writ one faction may say this thing… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a… — 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
No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In… — 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
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
![“[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f18/h-l-mencken-245_controversial_a-formula-for-answering-controversial-le_2795484.jpg)
![“By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f46/h-l-mencken-245_absolutely-nothing_by-profession-a-biologist-thomas-henry-h_5368.jpg)
