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


H. L. Mencken

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Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. -H. L. Mencken.
H. L. MENCKEN As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. -H. L. Mencken.
H. L. MENCKEN As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. thanks to Alan Bennett -H. L. Mencken.
H. L. MENCKEN and the girl and I get into her car and drive off into the hills and we go to her room and I take of...
BRET EASTON ELLIS Both [P. T.] Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one e...
CARL SAGAN (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON An approach, according to which children should fulfil their parents’ dreams/ do everything in ord...
LUKASZ LANIECKI 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 War violates the natural order of things, in which children bury their parents; in war parents bury ...
JEH JOHNSON Public school is a place of detention for children placed in the care of teachers who are afraid of ...
SOURCE UNKNOWN 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 Hopefully, the children and their parents will realize that the whole community is serious about hav...
DAVID KELLEY The news today is just the tip of the iceberg for L & H. This is a classic story of the chicken comi...
LANNY DAVIS Though there are some notable exceptions, by and large the persistent ranting of the Warren Commissi...
VINCENT BUGLIOSI The shame and the downfall of a modern materialistic society is her inability to treasure, care for,...
C. JOYBELL C. They stay in their homes, ... There is a lot of suspicion. Fifty percent of the children that were h...
LISA ARONSON We know some of the children have talked in school saying their parents were picked up.
SUSANA ALMANZA Children see in their parents the past, their parents see in them the future; and if we find more lo...
JOHN RUSKIN Where parents do too much for their children, the children will not do much for themselves.
ELBERT HUBBARD Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM How many would do the 'right thing' and attend school? Why, in fact, do we require school attendance...
DAVID L. KATZ The conscience of children is formed by the influences that surround them; their notions of good and...
JEAN PAUL The conscience of children is formed by the influences that surround them; their notions of good and...
JEAN PAUL RICHTER Love, what you DO, Respect, who DOES for you, Appreciate, who DOES for others, Salute, who DOES for ...
PRITISH PATTANAIK Life is a school of probability.
WALTER BAGEHOT Arizona is a national leader in school choice with both charter schools and tuition tax credits givi...
JANE D. HULL Parents in China are very strict with their children. They say you should do this, you shouldn't do ...
ZHANG JIE Children of well-to-do parents often become victims of their parents' personal ambition. Many are fo...
SETO MULYADI If a willing school board wants to consider race as a factor, shouldn't it be able to do so if, afte...
JACK BOGER ...The life of the parents is the only thing that makes good children. Parents should be very patien...
ELDER PORPHYRIOS Because parents have power over children. They feel they have to do what their parents say. But the ...
MICHAEL JACKSON Where is it written in the Constitution that you may take children from their parents, and parents f...
DANIEL WEBSTER His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone ha...
TEKOA MANNING Don’t be so hard on yourself, You’re doing the same thing, trying to reconcile all the moms that...
CHRISTOPHER MOORE If other parents understood the potential their children could gain from that school, it would make ...
TERRY ANDERSON You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.
PETER USTINOV Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
PETER USTINOV Parents are the bone on which children sharpen their teeth
PETER USTINOV Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. The best thing you can do for your kids is to show them God working in you on a daily basis.
CRAIG GROESCHEL It's time now to rent a car, roll down the windows and prepare for your first big thrill: the freewa...
JOHN WATERS In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter...
HERODOTUS You've got to S-M-I-L-E
To be H-A-Double-P-Y
SHIRLEY TEMPLE BLACK We're concerned about children that reside in this area -- them getting connected with their parents...
JANET JOHNSON Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a v...
GEORGE SANTAYANA Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a v...
GEORGE SANTAYANA There is only enough time in this world for me to be me. I don't have time to be anyone else." H,L,S...
SUSIE L HILL Wake up to a brand new day and realize why you woke up to meet the day! Live to the end of another d...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH All parents want their children to succeed in school. They just don't know how to help them. When yo...
ALICE MCGREW I first met the subject of X-ray diffraction of crystals in the pages of the book W. H. Bragg wrote ...
DOROTHY HODGKIN There is nothing evil save that which perverts the mind and shackles the conscience.
SAINT AMBROSE These philosophically fun ideas usually satisfy nobody. Nonetheless, they remind us that ignorance i...
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON Parents, ... are without a doubt the best line of defense for their children in trying to make sure ...
BLANCHE LINCOLN The Port Lavaca Police Department is requesting that parents make their children aware that a prank ...
JOHN STEWART It is unconstitutional to force parents to bring their children to an underperforming and high on cr...
HAMLET GARCIA You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace."
I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl...
TAMMARA WEBBER HELP = H(umor), E-go, edging God out, L-istening, P-urpose
KEN BLANCHARD HELP = H(umor), E-go, edging God out, L-istening, P-urpose.
KEN BLANCHARD The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS Parents should always kiss their children good night, and children should always make sure that thei...
EMANOUHL The anti-Darwin movement has racked up one astounding achievement. It has made a significant proport...
IAN HACKING Never give up on you. In order to make a difference you would have to somehow be different.
JOHNNIE DENT JR. Parents who are footing the bill for their children's education have the right to know what's taking...
DIANE GRAMLEY We found that frequent snoring at age 1 is as prevalent as that reported in school-age children. Par...
DR. MANINDER KALRA We found that frequent snoring at age 1 is as prevalent as that reported in school-age children. Par...
DR MANINDER KALRA I have done it," she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she ...
MADELINE MILLER Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may ta...
DANIEL WEBSTER Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth. -Peter Ustinov.
PETER USTINOV Don’t let the enemy try to keep you bound with fear. The devil is a liar. Stay in faith and trust ...
GERMANY KENT Mother Superior jump the gun...
-The Beatles, Happiness is a Warm Gun
LAUREN MYRACLE History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN But if any man say unto you, This is offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that shew...
BIBLE Asian people are very practical and come from a conservative world. The parents want their kids to b...
B. D. WONG One of the messages we want to get across ... is when children do not get what they need it is a ref...
ALICE MCGREW Not a few millions of parents strongly hope that their own children will step in by instantly becomi...
MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA To keep a child from a parent is one of the great evils in the world even if it is the other parent ...
TROY J. GAINEY When man decides to vent evil,he anaesthetizes the stumbling block which is his conscience.
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) If I provide for this life and turn away from the Lord, I am wise for a moment, but lost forever.
FRANCINE RIVERS The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS It is vital that foster parents can perform that role in a very vulnerable time in a child's life. M...
GARY KLEEBLATT It is a question of whether children should have to pay the price for their parents' choices. Childr...
DIANE ROWLAND The most formidable adversary of evil is a persistent man with a loud conscience.
JUSTIN ALCALA but my dad said it was no excuse.
"But I love him!" I had never seen my sister cry that much. STEPHEN CHBOSKY Oh happy day! A day to make a hay! And when it is mid-day, think about the day! And when you think a...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH I envision presenting parents with a marketplace of school choices - public, private, parochial, cha...
JEB BUSH She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going t...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY We Are All Infinite
STEPHEN CHBOSKY You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY That one moment when you know you are not a sad story. You are ALIVE.
STEPHAN CHBOSKY Somos quienes somos por un montón de razones.Quizás nunca conozcamos la mayoría de ellas.Pero aun...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Ambos dijeron que tomara asiento y parecían hablar en serio, así que me senté.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all beco...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybewe'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY

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