No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin. — H. L. Mencken Code Copy Share Image
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents. — H. L. Mencken Children Copy Share Image
Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. — H. L. Mencken Belief Copy Share Image
The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman. — H. L. Mencken Communism Copy Share Image
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. — H. L. Mencken Belief 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 April 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 Children Copy Share Image
The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens--of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases… — H. L. Mencken American literature Copy Share Image
Love, to the inferior man, remains almost wholly a physical matter. The heroine he most admires is the one who offers the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by… — H. L. Mencken Curse Copy Share Image
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed… — H. L. Mencken Christian Copy Share Image
Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on… — H. L. Mencken Fanatics Copy Share Image
What are the hallmarks of a competent writer of fiction? The first, it seems to me, is that he should be immensely… — 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
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 Certainty Copy Share Image
The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead… — H. L. Mencken Agnostic Copy Share Image
This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not… — 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 Alcohol Copy Share Image
The truth is that the scientific value of Polar exploration is greatly exaggerated. The thing that takes men on such hazardous trips… — H. L. Mencken Adventure Copy Share Image
Great artists are modest almost as seldom as they are faithful to their wives. — H. L. Mencken Art 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 Experience 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 Amiable Copy Share Image
Writing books is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy. — H. L. Mencken Book Copy Share Image
If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. — H. L. Mencken Age 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 Commandments Copy Share Image
“Whenever a husband and a wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.” — H. L. Mencken Coroner Copy Share Image
The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots. — H. L. Mencken Belief Copy Share Image
The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket. — H. L. Mencken Faces Copy Share Image
The university president who cashiered every professor unwilling to support Woodrow Wilson for the first vacancy in the Trinity. . . . — H. L. Mencken Education Copy Share Image
Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice. — H. L. Mencken Decision Copy Share Image
The learned are seldom pretty fellows, and in many cases their appearance tends to discourage a love of study in the young. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use. — H. L. Mencken Amusing Copy Share Image
Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him… — H. L. Mencken America Copy Share Image
