An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.


H. L. Mencken

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As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. -H. L. Mencken.
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As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. thanks to Alan Bennett -H. L. Mencken.
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At home I have big vats of cabbage soup that I make to slim down.
JILLY COOPER
An idealist is one who helps the other fellow to make a profit
HENRY FORD
An educated person would know that holding a degree will not make you entitled to a better job nor a...
J.B.
Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or deba...
CATHY BETTER
A first rate soup is better than a second rate painting
ABRAHAM MASLOW
Smell the roses. Smell the coffee. Whatever it is that makes you happy.
RITA MORENO
I hope that people will realize that the struggle to make a life better with a sibling is worth it.
MARIE BRENNER
Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not.
SONYA.E.WILLIAMS
Worries go down better with soup than without.
JEWISH PROVERB
Both [P. T.] Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one e...
CARL SAGAN
I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the...
LEO SZILARD
The road to salvation is filled with many false dark turn-offs, if you take those roads they will le...
GARY F EVANS...
There's so much to appreciate about my life every single day, and I make a big point of taking t...
JOSIE MARAN
As we get older, we get better at choosing in ways that will make us happy. We do a better job at pi...
SHEENA IYENGAR
The tattoo is just setting below his hp bone.
H e l l i s e m p t y
a n d a l l t h e d ...
TAHEREH MAFI
It is better to be alone, she figures, than to be with someone who can't see who you are. It is bett...
E. LOCKHART
It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to o...
JOHN MILTON CAGE
It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to o...
JOHN CAGE
No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it.
ARISTOTLE
Teaching you how to grow a garden is better than giving you a thousand roses.
MATSHONA DHLIWAYO
Who that has reason, and his smell, Would not among roses and jasmin dwell?
MME. A.M. BIGOT DE CORNUEL
We are apt to forget that children watch examples better than they listen to preaching. -Roy L. Smi...
ROY L. SMITH
It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to o...
JOHN CAGE
Don't just look; see! There is always an opportunity to make something better! There is always a bet...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
An educator...a good one that is, inspires others to be even better than herself.
JILL TELFORD
Having a good wife and rich cabbage soup, seek not other things
RUSSIAN PROVERB
There ain't a body, be it mouse or man, that ain't made better by a little soup.
KATE DICAMILLO
Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly -Robert H. Schuller
ROBERT H. SCHULLER
I did my famous cabbage soup diet, so I was able to do it.
ELLEN BURSTYN
If you make it a Habit to make your Today better than your Yesterday, then for sure, your Tomorrow w...
RVM
While it is better to be loved than hated, it is also far better to be hated than ignored.
VIET THANH NGUYEN
Gimme an S! A T! An O! A C! Followed by a K-H-O-L-M! What's it spell? HEAD FUCK.

- Jane
J.R. WARD
Some people think daisies are weeds.. but who decided roses were better??? I would much rather a dai...
RACHEL-ERIKA HENDERSON
“The inquiring mind is never satisfied with things as they are. It is always seeking ways to make t...
HARLOW H. CURTICE
A sold-out crowd is better than a number one. But being in the studio is better than all of that.
CHARLI XCX
The brain is a pleasure seeking machine. Once you teach it, through meditation, that abiding calmly ...
DAN HARRIS
I I I I I I t t t t t t i i i i i i s s s s s s u u u u u u n n n n n n f f f f f f o o o o o o r r ...
TODD COBURN
All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things : That it is better to be alive than dead, ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
One keep - clean is better than ten make - cleans
PROVERB
I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system -- that is n...
HARPER LEE
It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer.
WILLIAM BLACKSTONE
It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer.
WILLIAM BLACKSTONE
It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer.
BIBLE
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
WILLIAM BLACKSTONE
Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the no...
G. K. CHESTERTON
What an Oscar means is that in that film, you were doing what you do better than anybody else that y...
LESLIE UNGER
Yeah. I'm the fly in the soup. I don't like it any better than you do. Flies don't like being swampe...
REX STOUT
I hope that Requiem is better than Pi. I hope that Pi is better than my student films, and I'm h...
DARREN ARONOFSKY
I believe that it's better to be looked over than it is to be overlooked.
MAE WEST
If the people who make the decisions are the people who will also bear the consequences of those dec...
JOHN ABRAMS
The females you'll find warming church pews on Sunday morning will give you a better ride than you c...
BOBBY W. MILLER
There was always so much going on. Never any time to stop and smell the roses. Never any roses to st...
ELLIE LIEBERMAN
It is better to have a fair intellect that is well used, than a powerful one that is idle.
BRYANT MCGILL
This is an important story that we've wanted to tell for a long time, ... And we couldn't have asked...
DAVID LEAF
Make a difference, change the game for the better, leave a legacy, be a guide that someone else can ...
CARLOS WALLACE
This wasn't one of our better efforts and you can't afford to come out with less than your best effo...
MIKE ANGEL
I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix.
DEYTH BANGER
Don't spend your precious time asking "Why isn't the world a better place?" It will only be time was...
LEO F. BUSCAGLIA
It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.
VOLTAIRE
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
VOLTAIRE
We have such an opportunity for this state to be better than it is, and I hope to have an opportunit...
DENNIS WIESE
I think that women just have a primeval instinct to make soup, which they will try to foist on anybo...
DYLAN MORAN
This evolution may compromise Java's claim of being simpler than C++, but my guess is that the e...
BJARNE STROUSTRUP
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better...
TS (THOMAS STEARNS) ELIOT
One can make no better investment than the cultivation of a taste for the beautiful, for it will bri...
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
It's better to file an extension than do something so fast that you make mistakes.
KAY BELL
The best way to deal with an enemy is to love that person. It will make you feel better and drive th...
JIM GENOVESE
Worries go down better with soup
PROVERB
I am a misanthrope, but exceedingly benevolent; I am very cranky, and am a super-idealist. ... I can...
ALFRED NOBEL
An owner-operator usually has a better handle on the business than someone who's an employee. If the...
HAL COOK
I'm fairly certain that A is better than B and that B is better than C. I'm not sure if I can say A ...
DAN GEER
People tell me all the time I should stop and smell the roses, but I can't. I'm always think...
EDDIE TRUNK
A person who is another man's slave is better than one who is a slave to lust.
MICHAEL BASSEY JOHNSON
No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.
BRUNO MARS
The implication of AKC registration is that a dog who has it is better than a dog who hasn't.
JEAN HANFF KORELITZ
A person who thinks that he knows something better doesn’t know that his wife knows better than hi...
VIKRANT PARSAI
It is better to decide a difference between enemies than friends, for one of our friends will certa...
PIERRE JEAN DE BERANGER
It is better to decide a difference between enemies than friends, for one of our friends will certai...
BIAS OF PRIENE
It is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ul...
PETER MARSHALL
l do desire we be better strangers
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Better never begin than never make an end.
GEORGE HERBERT
This is a better-than-expected report, but not one that gives you full confidence that this is an ec...
JOSH BIVENS
Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.
BUDDHA
Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
BUDDHA
Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
We can do better in higher education. And it is more than just technology. It's also an attitude...
ROY ROMER
For that one to go in on the last hole was nice. I'd liked to have given Paul a better run. But seco...
CRAIG LILE
We will certainly discuss it at the next executive committee meeting -- it is a very serious matter ...
ANDERS FRISK
Teaching needs an ecosystem that supports evidence-based practice. It will need better systems to di...
BEN GOLDACRE
We, as a wrestling community, better remember it is more than one individual that makes a winner.
DAN GABLE
We're just concerned neighbors who want to make the area better. This is just one step to do that.
MIKE WILLICH
There is nothing more valuable than great classroom instruction. But let's stop putting the whol...
THOMAS FRIEDMAN
Who is a better person to tackle that challenge with than Steven Spielberg?
NEIL YOUNG

More H. L. Mencken

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
H. L. MENCKEN
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
H. L. MENCKEN
There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
H. L. MENCKEN
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
H. L. MENCKEN
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
H. L. MENCKEN
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H. L. MENCKEN
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H. L. MENCKEN
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin sl...
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
H. L. MENCKEN
On one issue, at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
H. L. MENCKEN
The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation...
H. L. MENCKEN
Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-hor...
H. L. MENCKEN
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
H. L. MENCKEN
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly ...
H. L. MENCKEN
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to ...
H. L. MENCKEN
Time stays, we go.
H. L. MENCKEN
A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.
H. L. MENCKEN
The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom...
H. L. MENCKEN
Archbishop -- A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. MENCKEN
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who wi...
H. L. MENCKEN
All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will b...
H. L. MENCKEN
The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surm...
H. L. MENCKEN
The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are wo...
H. L. MENCKEN
There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
H. L. MENCKEN
There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as ...
H. L. MENCKEN
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr...
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had an...
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another.
H. L. MENCKEN
To be in love is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia.
H. L. MENCKEN
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys...
H. L. MENCKEN
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
H. L. MENCKEN
If I ever marry it will be on a sudden impulse, as a man shoots himself.
H. L. MENCKEN
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's ...
H. L. MENCKEN
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and hence clamorous to be led t...
H. L. MENCKEN
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense that we respect his theory that ...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is a sin to believe in the evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
H. L. MENCKEN
Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party...
H. L. MENCKEN
We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
H. L. MENCKEN
No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a c...
H. L. MENCKEN
School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of du...
H. L. MENCKEN
Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
H. L. MENCKEN
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all: it is simply to reduce as many in...
H. L. MENCKEN
The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the ...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
H. L. MENCKEN
Fame: an embalmer trembling with stage fright.
H. L. MENCKEN
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice s...
H. L. MENCKEN
One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will...
H. L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.
H. L. MENCKEN
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her hea...
H. L. MENCKEN
A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regar...
H. L. MENCKEN
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later, for another thing, th...
H. L. MENCKEN
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
H. L. MENCKEN
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
H. L. MENCKEN
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't, they'd be married too.
H. L. MENCKEN
It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards ce...
H. L. MENCKEN
To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better...
H. L. MENCKEN
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
H. L. MENCKEN
Time is the great equalizer in the field of morals.
H. L. MENCKEN
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act...
H. L. MENCKEN
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are ...
H. L. MENCKEN
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he...
H. L. MENCKEN
The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is t...
H. L. MENCKEN
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in l...
H. L. MENCKEN
A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean...
H. L. MENCKEN
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usuall...
H. L. MENCKEN
There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.
H. L. MENCKEN
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is a...
H. L. MENCKEN
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid f...
H. L. MENCKEN
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendura...
H. L. MENCKEN
Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
H. L. MENCKEN
Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is...
H. L. MENCKEN
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upo...
H. L. MENCKEN
There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hou...
H. L. MENCKEN
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that th...
H. L. MENCKEN
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly m...
H. L. MENCKEN
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
H. L. MENCKEN
On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
H. L. MENCKEN
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery ...
H. L. MENCKEN
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
H. L. MENCKEN
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
H. L. MENCKEN
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
H. L. MENCKEN
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
H. L. MENCKEN
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
H. L. MENCKEN
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
H. L. MENCKEN
If I had my way, no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust under the United Sta...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite eas...
H. L. MENCKEN
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their ...
H. L. MENCKEN
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
H. L. MENCKEN
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what They want, and deserve to get it good and h...
H. L. MENCKEN
Democracy is also a form of religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
H. L. MENCKEN
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest...
H. L. MENCKEN
The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
H. L. MENCKEN
Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. W...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as ha...
H. L. MENCKEN
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
H. L. MENCKEN
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
H. L. MENCKEN
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H. L. MENCKEN
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
H. L. MENCKEN
Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and mis...
H. L. MENCKEN
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
H. L. MENCKEN
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not s...
H. L. MENCKEN
Historian -- an unsuccessful novelist.
H. L. MENCKEN
Jealousy is the theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.
H. L. MENCKEN
The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective support, is really no evid...
H. L. MENCKEN
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, a...
H. L. MENCKEN
The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the cre...
H. L. MENCKEN
The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be...
H. L. MENCKEN
God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only san...
H. L. MENCKEN
The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craf...
H. L. MENCKEN
Injustice is relatively easy to bear what stings is justice.
H. L. MENCKEN
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the ...
H. L. MENCKEN
JUDGE, n: A law student who marks his own papers.
H. L. MENCKEN
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
H. L. MENCKEN
The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours....
H. L. MENCKEN
Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Fathe...
H. L. MENCKEN
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
H. L. MENCKEN
The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
H. L. MENCKEN
Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not...
H. L. MENCKEN
Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
H. L. MENCKEN
The Belief that man is outfitted with an immortal soul, differing altogether from the engines which ...
H. L. MENCKEN
Alimony -- the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. MENCKEN
A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.
H. L. MENCKEN
No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
H. L. MENCKEN
The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certaint...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
H. L. MENCKEN
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.
H. L. MENCKEN
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H. L. MENCKEN
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
H. L. MENCKEN
The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.
H. L. MENCKEN
Imagine the Creator as a stand up comedian - and at once the world becomes explicable.
H. L. MENCKEN
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though sh...
H. L. MENCKEN
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
H. L. MENCKEN
Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work; almost always it devotes...
H. L. MENCKEN
I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
H. L. MENCKEN
The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spend...
H. L. MENCKEN
Remorse is regret that one waited so long to do it.
H. L. MENCKEN
Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
H. L. MENCKEN
Life is a dead-end street.
H. L. MENCKEN
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though sh...
H. L. MENCKEN
It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound c...
H. L. MENCKEN
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act...
H. L. MENCKEN
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
H. L. MENCKEN
The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the lower levels, is and always must be essential...
H. L. MENCKEN
The more a man dreams, the less he believes.
H. L. MENCKEN
On one issue at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women.
H. L. MENCKEN
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays twice as much in taxes as he former...
H. L. MENCKEN
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the...
H. L. MENCKEN
Before a man speaks, it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks it is seldom nec...
H. L. MENCKEN
How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a w...
H. L. MENCKEN
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
H. L. MENCKEN
Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
H. L. MENCKEN
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundre...
H. L. MENCKEN
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
H. L. MENCKEN
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other a...
H. L. MENCKEN
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
H. L. MENCKEN
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for idea...
H. L. MENCKEN
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another...
H. L. MENCKEN
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
H. L. MENCKEN
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
H. L. MENCKEN
Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. MENCKEN
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at la...
H. L. MENCKEN
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
H. L. MENCKEN
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
H. L. MENCKEN
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief ...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common hones...
H. L. MENCKEN
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
H. L. MENCKEN
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice t...
H. L. MENCKEN
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led t...
H. L. MENCKEN
It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sou...
H. L. MENCKEN
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. MENCKEN
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of...
H. L. MENCKEN
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what...
H. L. MENCKEN
Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven...
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
H. L. MENCKEN
No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed age...
H. L. MENCKEN
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexpl...
H. L. MENCKEN
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice...
H. L. MENCKEN
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of peop...
H. L. MENCKEN
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regar...
H. L. MENCKEN
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. MENCKEN
I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
H. L. MENCKEN
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries fo...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get ...
H. L. MENCKEN
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.
H. L. MENCKEN
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom nec...
H. L. MENCKEN
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our f...
H. L. MENCKEN
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
H. L. MENCKEN
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. MENCKEN
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he fo...
H. L. MENCKEN
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
H. L. MENCKEN
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. MENCKEN
It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.
H. L. MENCKEN
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. MENCKEN
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
H. L. MENCKEN
Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time ma...
H. L. MENCKEN
Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and mis...
H. L. MENCKEN
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and ...
H. L. MENCKEN
There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are goo...
H. L. MENCKEN
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
H. L. MENCKEN