H. L. Mencken Quotes

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H. L. Mencken

Profession : Writer

Birth : September 12, 1880

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

H. L. Mencken

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

H. L. Mencken

Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

H. L. Mencken

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

H. L. Mencken

Every man is his own hell.

H. L. Mencken

Life is a dead-end street.

H. L. Mencken

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

H. L. Mencken

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

H. L. Mencken

A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.

H. L. Mencken

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

H. L. Mencken

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

H. L. Mencken

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.

H. L. Mencken

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.

H. L. Mencken

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

H. L. Mencken

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

H. L. Mencken

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

H. L. Mencken

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

H. L. Mencken

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.

H. L. Mencken

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

H. L. Mencken

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.

H. L. Mencken