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H L Mencken
The theater. ....
The theater. . . is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously...
The idea that...
The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. . . . The average man simply spends his...
The only cure...
The only cure for contempt is countercontempt.
Source: Minority Report: H. L....
Man is a...
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said is that its...
God is the...
God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His...
All successful newpapers...
All successful newpapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can...
There is nothing...
There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply...
What men value...
What men value in this world is not rights, but privileges.
Source: Notebook Entry,...
A nun, at...
A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.
Source:...
Philosophy consists very...
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I...
I hate all...
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
We must respect...
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that...
It is now...
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still...
Government is actually...
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that...
The one permanent...
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear -- fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he...
No normal man...
No normal man ever fell in love after 30 when the kidneys begin to disintegrate.
It is hard...
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his...
The great artists...
The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
It takes a...
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not...
When one hears...
When one hears of a poet past thirty-five he seems somehow unnatural and obscene.