A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn't believe he is dead — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again. — 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
Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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
Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that… — 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
All the great enterprises of the world are run by a few smart men: their aides and associates run down by rapid… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man with no respect for it. It is not… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The great masses of men, though theoretically free, are seen to submit supinely to oppression and exploitation of a hundred abhorrent sorts.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions… — 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… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The aim of poetry, it appears, is to fill the mind with lofty thoughts--not to give it joy, but to give it… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 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
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
The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If the average man is made in God's image, then such a man as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Man's objection to love is that it dies hard: women's, that when it is dead it stays dead. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence, it is almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterilized at once. — 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
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
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
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
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
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
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
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
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
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 Copy Share
Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
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 Copy Share