H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis Menckenwas a German-American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. As a scholar Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 September 1880
CountryUnited States of America
As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain. It is, I believe, the greatest of human inventions, and by far - much greater than Hell, the radio or the bichloride tablet.
Remorse-Regret that one waited so long to do it.
When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
I believe that it should be perfectly lawful to print even things that outrage the pruderies and prejudices of the general, so long as any honest minority, however small, wants to read them. The remedy of the majority is not prohibition, but avoidance.
One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
In the long run all battles are lost, and so are all wars.
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say that they will be realized later on. Thus, if we have another boom, they will argue that the collapse of capitalism is only postponed. The fact that the greatest booms ever heard of followed Marx's formal prophecy of the downfall of capitalism is already forgotten, just as millions have long since forgotten the early Christian prophecy that the end of the world was at hand. The first Christians accepted postponements as docilely as the Communists of today.
The extortions and oppressions of government will go on so long as such bare fraudulence deceives and disarms the victims; so long as they are ready to swallow the immemorial official theory that protesting against the stealings of the archbishop's secretary's nephew's mistress' illegitimate son is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
The scent of frying astronomers long ago ceased to ascend to Yahweh.
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
Dachshund: A half-a-dog high and a dog-and-a-half long.
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.