H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis Menckenwas a German-American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. As a scholar Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 September 1880
CountryUnited States of America
Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.
Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.
He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.
The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people's money.
The scent of frying astronomers long ago ceased to ascend to Yahweh.
History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.
The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy.
The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate.
After all, the world is not our handiwork, and we are not responsible for what goes on in it, save within very narrow limits.
The worst government is the most moral.
All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.
The average schoolmaster is, and always must be, an ass.
I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.