Famous Quotes from ...

Henry Louis Mencken

  • You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • Living with a dog is messy - like living with an idealist... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • The more a man dreams, the less he believes... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • The surest way to get on in politics in America is to play the leading part in a prosecution which attracts public notice... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing they marry later; for another thing they die earlier... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • We must respect the other fellow's religion,but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier - and also a good deal more foolish... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who Is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • Every man is thoroughly happy twice in his life: just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse - that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • The thing which sets off the American from all other men, and gives peculiar color not only to the pattern of his daily life but also adds to the play of his inner ideas, is what, for want of a more exact term, may be called social aspiration... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • Nothing is more patent, indeed, than the fact that charity merely converts the unfit - who, in the course of nature, would soon die out and so cease to encumber the earth - into parasites - who live on indefinitely, a nuisance and a burden to their b... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • Government under democracy is thus government by orgy, almost by orgasm... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • It is more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.... Henry Louis Mencken {view}
  • When women kiss, it always reminds one of prizefighters shaking hands... Henry Louis Mencken {view}