The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man - say a Tennessee Holy Roller - is really very small. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Happiness is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all other men are just as easy to fool. — 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 best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The so-called religious organizations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 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
What reason is there for believing that a high death rate, in itself, is undesirable? To my knowledge none whatever. The plain… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is not the drinker, but the man who has just stopped drinking, who thinks the world is going to the dogs. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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
Man, at his best, remains a sort of one-lunged animal, never completely rounded and perfect, as a cockroach, say, is perfect. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What I admire most in any man is a serene spirit, a steady freedom from moral indignation, and all-embracing tolerance--in brief,what is… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin or when he sees silver he looks… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States. — 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
![“It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/c4a/h-l-mencken-245_agents_it-the-state-has-taken-on-a-vast-mass-of_717956.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)
