No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching… — 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
Syllogisms а la mode - If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Goverment is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 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
Only to often on meeting scientific men, even those of genuine distiction, one finds that they are dull fellows and very stupid.… — 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
All that the Y.M.C.A.'s horse and rings really accomplished was to fill me with an ineradicable distaste, not only for Christian endeavor… — 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
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 Copy Share Image
Even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights: the right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities, provided only that he does not… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The so-called Philosophy of India is even more blowsy and senseless than the metaphysics of the West. It is at war with… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth... It takes a special… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is difficult to imagine anyone having any real hopes for the human race in the face of the fact that the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be barred from any public office in the United States and… — 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 Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry:… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what… — 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
![“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)
