FastSaying

The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts.


H.L. Mencken

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KELLY JONES Millions of people acknowledge today that they do not know the meaning of life.
JAMES C. DOBSON Integrity is not everything, but it is the only thing that matters.
JEFFREY FRY The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a...
JEANETTE CORON I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It i...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR Not," Swift said firmly, "for all the tea in China."
"That expression has never made sense to m...
LISA KLEYPAS We have tears in our eyes
As we wave our goodbyes,
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ERNEST HEMINGWAY Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON The quarrel of the sociologists with the historians is that the latter have learned so much about ho...
ALBION W. SMALL Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON Men have two greatest fears: the first fear is the fear of being needed, and the second fear is the ...
C. JOYBELL C. Name the fears that are holding you back. It's the equivalent of flooding the boogeyman with light.
GINA GREENLEE It is hard to believe that if a public swimming pool had no chlorine in it the dirt and germs in it ...
GARY F EVANS... There is never a truer saying with significance said than we return to the earth from whence we came...
GARY F EVANS... I do not personally agree with some of the positions that Mr. Gonzales has advocated, but that shoul...
DANIEL INOUYE Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, i...
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, i...
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fi...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY It doesn't matter how good or how bad they are, they gonna stay there. The houses are not much to st...
CHARLES MARTIN It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in lo...
J.D. SALINGER Being present is being connected to All Things.
S. KELLEY HARRELL, M. DIV. They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to ...
WILLIAM LAW When you live in the present, the past is forgotten & the future takes care of itself.
MANDY HALE If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less ...
JOSEPH ADDISON If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less ...
JOSEPH ADDISON The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the...
MICHAEL HARRIS When every new football season starts, we get all excited about the Browns. But no matter how bad th...
DOLPH ZIGGLER The mark of a real man, is a man who can allow himself to fall deeply in love with a woman. But the ...
C. JOYBELL C. I think sometimes there is no right thing.
ROSAMUND HODGE Dive into the river of the present, but don't thrash about, go with the flow.
JIM GENOVESE The end is the matter! A step to the end is a factor!
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH A crook and crafty rules the place where the majority of the population is either hypocrites or fool...
ANUJ SOMANY Nature’s law is such that it metes out its justice to everyone as they deserve by giving each pers...
ANUJ SOMANY Every living being, from ants to whales, has a right to live and die in accordance with the law of t...
CHANDRABABU V.S. Any change one effect on his natural being with a purpose would definitely end up revealing his hypo...
CHANDRABABU V.S. It was because they were two parts of a whole. He did not belong to her. And she did not belong to h...
RENEE AHDIEH Cease with the displays of false modesty. The entire palace knows about it."
A feeling of warmt...
RENEE AHDIEH Do you know why I adore roses?" Shahrzad untied the knot of his tikka sash with deliberate slowness....
RENEE AHDIEH Where were you?" Shahrzad tried to control the tremor in her voice.
"Not where I should have b...
RENEE AHDIEH As always. As ever. As a rose to the sun.
RENEE AHDIEH the room of the spirit is the mind and the seat of the spirit is the heart. What we give room to muc...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The real thing that keeps men and women apart, is fear. Women blame men and men blame women, but the...
C. JOYBELL C. Lambhood and tigerishness may be found in either gender, and in the same individual at different tim...
MARGARET ATWOOD An emotionally locked person refuses to let go of their sad memories and live in the now.
KILROY J. OLDSTER Doctors quickly learn that how much they make has little to do with how good they are. It largely de...
ATUL GAWANDE An enthusiastic philosopher, of whose name we are not informed, had constructed a very satisfactory ...
CHARLES MACKAY One of the most troublesome things in life is that what you do or do not want has very little to do ...
LEMONY SNICKET All that we have achieved in life is creating a virtual reality for ourselves, while burying the act...
RAMANA PEMMARAJU Rise up & attack the day with Passion. The struggle you're in today is developing the strength y...
NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO No matter how much we think about something, in the end, the decision is made on how we feel.
JEFFREY FRY Life is the everlasting gobstopper with its complications of the starter being birth, the main cours...
GARY F EVANS... The warm sound of her laughter stole through Khalid's skin, heating the coldest reaches of his soul.
RENEE AHDIEH When you grow up there are things that you would love to do make your father proud is one and have f...
GARY F EVANS... Tomorrow is promised to no one. Prioritize today accordingly.
GINA GREENLEE And, indeed, though they differ concerning other things, yet all agree in this: that they think ther...
THOMAS MORE Tell your story to the universe and Let your actions speak LOVE.' No matter what it is.
NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO PEACE IS THE OBJECTIVE TO WAR, BUT THE BLOOD RUNNETH STILL
NATALIE URQUIETA Nature is brimful of symbolic and analogical parallels to the goings and comings, the growth and the...
GEORGE MACDONALD Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic ...
JACOB BRONOWSKI Before I had kids, I always found it funny how people would talk about their children like they were...
JENNIFER MILLER To get over the past, you first have to accept that the past is over. No matter how many times you r...
MANDY HALE Clay in the hands of a good potter suffers so many good turns, but in the end, we see its real and t...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH until we do what has not yet been done, what has not been done shall remain undone
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Forever is a long long time and time has a way of changing things
WALT DISNEY COMPANY When we put LIVE backwards it spells EVIL, interesting how one word can have two totally opposing me...
GARY F EVANS... I love you." she whispered into the rough wool of his sweater.
L.J. SMITH And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three,...
MONTY PYTHON I make mistakes. That's what I do. I
speak without thinking, I act without
knowing. I d...
CANDACE BUSHNELL When top scientists and psychologists talk about what's important to our overall wellbeing and h...
TOM RATH In principle the great religions of the world do not differ as much as they appear to.
ERNEST HOLMES We don't agree with their ends, but they are not madmen. They have a logic, we can understand it.
ANDREW COBURN They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matte...
GALILEO GALILEI If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far les...
JOSEPH ADDISON Then that's what the Northern Lights are. All the lives that we're not living.
ADI ALSAID The heart is deceitful and wicked in everyone; the Holy Spirit changes even the most wretched sinner...
NORM TOMLINSON Woe unto you if you have come to this world just to fear man,for man is nothing but ordinary dust wi...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) The power of man;Man does not only have the power to accomplish great & unbelievable things in life,...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) If therefore you shall be remembered for what you did with what you had more than what you had, use ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Eros (or call it lust if you will), is like a beautiful, magnificent Afghan Hound! A pure white Afgh...
C. JOYBELL C. The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Unc...
STEPHEN BATCHELOR Be your own person, don't follow the crowd, and above all, stand out.
BEN OAK Leaders show examples. They have something to offer and they’ll offer it by the process of how the...
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR It was frustrating to still be in the dark about something and be given only so little light.
LAUREN LOLA We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth ha...
L.M. MONTGOMERY Black and white thinking forces a choice between pretending we know everything and believing we know...
TERENCE T. GORSKI But this too is true: stories can save us.
TIM O'BRIEN No matter how badly senators want to know things, judicial nominees are limited in what they may dis...
ORRIN HATCH The young gentlemen who came calling seemed especially puzzling. They sat in their velvet shirts and...
PATRICIA A. MCKILLIP It is not always possible to do away with negative thinking, but with persistence and practice, one ...
STEPHEN RICHARDS Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a part...
BARUCH SPINOZA A law of nature is not a formula drawn up by a legislator, but a mere summary of the observed facts ...
JOSEPH MCCABE Both [P. T.] Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one e...
CARL SAGAN I'd rather be on the ground than under
To feel the heavy rain and the thunder.
ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES How much more generous it would be if, instead of writing parables about childhood wounds, psycholog...
MATT RIDLEY All day long you sit and sew,
Stitch life down for fear it grow,

Stitch life down fo...
EDITH SITWELL When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we have by ...
JUDGE LEARNED HAND I believe that even 'returning-to-nature' and anti pollution activities, no matter how commendable, ...
MASANOBU FUKUOKA

More 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 We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect...
H.L. MENCKEN If this is so, why should any man bother about moral rules and regulations? Why should any man confo...
H.L. MENCKEN There is something poignantly pathetic in the picture of this valiant fighter—this arrogant ja-sag...
H.L. MENCKEN It is hard to tell if a man is telling the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his plac...
H.L. MENCKEN In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of co...
H.L. MENCKEN Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this worl...
H.L. MENCKEN As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul...
H.L. MENCKEN The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man wh...
H.L. MENCKEN As I grow older I am unpleasantly impressed by the fact that giving each human being but one life is...
H.L. MENCKEN ONE OF the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that re...
H.L. MENCKEN The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what ...
H.L. MENCKEN Indeed it may be said with some confidence that the average man never really thinks from end to end ...
H.L. MENCKEN Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, ...
H.L. MENCKEN The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
H.L. MENCKEN Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party ...
H.L. MENCKEN Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he...
H.L. MENCKEN We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
H.L. MENCKEN Self-respect--the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
H.L. MENCKEN A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian i...
H.L. MENCKEN It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true i...
H.L. MENCKEN An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it make...
H.L. MENCKEN The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the...
H.L. MENCKEN People constantly speak of "the government" doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it....
H.L. MENCKEN The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. Bu...
H.L. MENCKEN All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing form...
H.L. MENCKEN Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always to...
H.L. MENCKEN I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom m...
H.L. MENCKEN The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and t...
H.L. MENCKEN All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow.
H.L. MENCKEN Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party ...
H.L. MENCKEN Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H.L. MENCKEN Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wh...
H.L. MENCKEN Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H.L. MENCKEN The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory t...
H.L. MENCKEN We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
H.L. MENCKEN To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason.
H.L. MENCKEN War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr...
H.L. MENCKEN The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more li...
H.L. MENCKEN It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-...
H.L. MENCKEN No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is called in to susta...
H.L. MENCKEN The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to th...
H.L. MENCKEN It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every cit...
H.L. MENCKEN The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable ac...
H.L. MENCKEN A judge is a law student who marks their own examination papers.
H.L. MENCKEN Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H.L. MENCKEN A great literature is chiefly the product of inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certain...
H.L. MENCKEN All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral valu...
H.L. MENCKEN It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone- that even the dullest man, in these bri...
H.L. MENCKEN Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
H.L. MENCKEN Nature abhors a moron.
H.L. MENCKEN No one in this world, so far as I know- and I have researched the records for years, and employed ag...
H.L. MENCKEN The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery ...
H.L. MENCKEN God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sa...
H.L. MENCKEN Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all other philosophers are jackasse...
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 And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Sc...
H.L. MENCKEN We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as somethi...
H.L. MENCKEN Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed...
H.L. MENCKEN The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost ...
H.L. MENCKEN Any man who inflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
H.L. MENCKEN There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the ...
H.L. MENCKEN Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H.L. MENCKEN It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.
H.L. MENCKEN The true function of art is to...edit nature and so make it coherent and lovely. The artist is a so...
H.L. MENCKEN To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
H.L. MENCKEN All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object i...
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 When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
H.L. MENCKEN I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes.
H.L. MENCKEN A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H.L. MENCKEN The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young...
H.L. MENCKEN The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed{and hence the clamorous to be le...
H.L. MENCKEN The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
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 is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that te...
H.L. MENCKEN For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to th...
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 What I'd like to read is a scientific review, by a scientific psychologist--if any exists--of 'A Sci...
H.L. MENCKEN Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
H.L. MENCKEN Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
H.L. MENCKEN The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christian...
H.L. MENCKEN Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a time wh...
H.L. MENCKEN The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge...
H.L. MENCKEN One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
H.L. MENCKEN If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some...
H.L. MENCKEN The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more li...
H.L. MENCKEN The opera…is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
H.L. MENCKEN When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivabl...
H.L. MENCKEN Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every h...
H.L. MENCKEN The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, wit...
H.L. MENCKEN I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and gre...
H.L. MENCKEN Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
H.L. MENCKEN He believed that there was need in the world for a class freed from the handicap of law and morality...
H.L. MENCKEN When we consider the fact that the spectroscope has enabled us to make a chemical analysis of the su...
H.L. MENCKEN He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, f...
H.L. MENCKEN In the superman Nietzsche gave the world a conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. But t...
H.L. MENCKEN Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable of any such confusion o...
H.L. MENCKEN Yet the same thing happens to the notions of morality. They are devised, at the start, as measures o...
H.L. MENCKEN Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
H.L. MENCKEN Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H.L. MENCKEN The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the ...
H.L. MENCKEN The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the es...
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 Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
H.L. MENCKEN I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
H.L. MENCKEN Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and ha...
H.L. MENCKEN No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agen...
H.L. MENCKEN You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.
H.L. MENCKEN He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; ...
H.L. MENCKEN There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
H.L. MENCKEN the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.
H.L. MENCKEN Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sak...
H.L. MENCKEN Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be r...
H.L. MENCKEN Under democracy one party always devotes it's chief energies to prove that the other party is unfit ...
H.L. MENCKEN The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist...
H.L. MENCKEN A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H.L. MENCKEN There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portug...
H.L. MENCKEN American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless...
H.L. MENCKEN Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world the...
H.L. MENCKEN That's the good thing about it. Nothing counts except what's goin' on around you.
H.L. DAVIS You're kind and patient and honorable, and yes, maybe those aren't flashy, magical, extraordinary tr...
H.L. BURKE A peaceful feeling: A happy harmony or symphony of all of our character pieces working in powerful u...
H.L. BALCOMB ART happens every time we live in the spirit of the moment’s greatness" from Cinderella in Focus
H.L. BALCOMB If religion is understanding God in the collective stories of life, then spirituality is finding God...
H.L. BALCOMB When a mother elevates her communication, she naturally elevates the outcomes of her child's life si...
H.L. BALCOMB The smaller the item of gratitude, the purer is the connection to our heart.
H.L. BALCOMB Vulnerability along with a sense of humility are the purest forms of strength.
H.L. BALCOMB Her smile makes me feel like a million little stars have just found their home in the gravitational ...
H.L. BALCOMB We need to be wise consumers of information in an age of artificially created reality, written by pr...
H.L. WEGLEY As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner ...
HL 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 Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think becau...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation...
H. L. MENCKEN Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the pr...
HENRY LOUIS 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 worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. B...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
HENRY LOUIS 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 A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
HENRY LOUIS 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