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
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."
the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.
Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.
Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.
When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.