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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. — 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
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
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
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