Dedicatio.com

Quotations for Every Mood





Quotations of selected author

Henry Louis Mencken

1880 - 1956. American journalist and satirist.

1. "When women kiss it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands."

source: "Chrestomathy"

categories: Woman and Man

2. "When a husband's story is believed, he begins to suspect his wife."

categories: Marriage -:- Trust

3. "Wealth - Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband."

categories: Richness and Money

4. "We are here and it is now: further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine."

categories: Knowledge, Ignorance -:- Human

5. "To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself."

categories: Defeates and Mistakes

6. "To be in love is merely to be in a state of perpetual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess."

categories: Love

7. "Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals."

categories: Law and Crime -:- Manners and Ethics -:- Time and Passing

8. "The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Woman and Man

9. "The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Authority, Government -:- Politics and Diplomacy

10. "The Americans are the illegitimate children of the English."

categories: History and Nations

11. "Temptation is the woman's weapon and the man's excuse."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Manners and Ethics -:- Sin and Conscience

12. "Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Dreams and Desires -:- Sin and Conscience -:- Various

13. "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

categories: God and Religion

14. "Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself."

source: "Minority Report: H.L. Mencken`s Notebooks"

categories: Egoism -:- Science and Technology

15. "Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient."

source: "A Book of Burlesques"

categories: Life and Death

16. "Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are wrong."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Manners and Ethics -:- Good and Evil

17. "Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later. For another thing, they die earlier."

source: "Chrestomathy"

categories: Woman and Man

18. "Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Happiness -:- Human

19. "Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Life and Death -:- Time and Passing -:- Woman and Man

20. "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 cosmetic effect is good."

source: "Minority Report"

categories: Human -:- Science and Technology

21. "Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."

categories: Love -:- Reality and Imagination -:- Intellect, Judgement

22. "Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another."

categories: Love -:- Woman and Man

23. "Living with a dog is messy - like living with an idealist."

categories: Nature and Animals

24. "Life is a dead-end street."

categories: Life and Death

25. "Lawyer - One who protects us against robbers by taking away the temptation."

categories: Law and Crime

26. "Jealousy is the theory that some other fellow has just as little taste."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Envy

27. "It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull."

categories: Egoism -:- Wisdom and Stupidity

28. "It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry."

source: "Notebooks"

categories: Manners and Ethics

29. "Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice."

source: "Prejudices"

categories: Justice

30. "In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Woman and Man

31. "In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Love -:- Woman and Man

32. "I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark."

categories: Health and Alcohol

33. "I get little enjoyment out of women, more out of alcohol, most out of ideas."

source: "Prejudices"

categories: Health and Alcohol -:- Joy and Sadness -:- Woman and Man

34. "Hope is a pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Optimism and Hope -:- Reality and Imagination

35. "Happiness is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married women and single men."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Happiness -:- Marriage

36. "Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent."

source: "Minority Report: H.L. Mencken`s Notebooks"

categories: Authority, Government -:- Defeates and Mistakes

37. "Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Friendship and Hostility

38. "Every man is his own hell."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Human -:- Good and Evil

39. "Democracy is the pathetic belief in the wisdom of collective ignorance."

categories: Politics and Diplomacy

40. "Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage."

categories: Politics and Diplomacy

41. "Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses."

categories: Politics and Diplomacy

42. "Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."

categories: Politics and Diplomacy

43. "Criticism is prejudice made plausible."

categories: Various

44. "Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking."

categories: Sin and Conscience

45. "Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends."

categories: Sin and Conscience

46. "Bachelors have consciences. Married men have wives."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Marriage -:- Sin and Conscience

47. "An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."

categories: Various

48. "A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child."

categories: Art and Culture -:- Youth and Age

49. "A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier."

source: "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

categories: Various -:- Knowledge, Ignorance

50. "A man may be a fool and not know it - but not if he is married."

categories: Marriage -:- Wisdom and Stupidity

51. "A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it."

categories: Family and Loneliness

52. "A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."

categories: Various


Privacy Policy
Valid XHTML 1.1 Valid CSS!
2007-2009, collected and compiled by Kazimierz Matan
Layout based on template by Darren Hester, DesignsByDarren.com