Henry Louis Mencken

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Manners and Ethics

Sin and Conscience

Rating: 5.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Woman and Man

Rating: 7.00 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Woman and Man

Rating: 5.17 (Number of Voters: 6)

"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."

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Happiness

Human

Rating: 4.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Every man is his own hell."

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Good and Evil

Human

Rating: 7.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Authority, Government

Politics and Diplomacy

Rating: 6.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Dreams and Desires

Sin and Conscience

Rating: 6.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "Prejudices"

Justice

Rating: 7.50 (Number of Voters: 2)

"Bachelors have consciences. Married men have wives."

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Marriage

Sin and Conscience

Rating: 1.00 (Number of Voters: 1)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Optimism and Hope

Reality and Imagination

Rating: 3.40 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Good and Evil

Manners and Ethics

Rating: 3.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

"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."

Henry Louis Mencken "Minority Report: H.L. Mencken`s Notebooks"

Authority, Government

Defeates and Mistakes

Rating: 3.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

"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."

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Happiness

Marriage

Rating: 4.80 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Love

Woman and Man

Rating: 4.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Knowledge, Ignorance

Various

Rating: 3.40 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Friendship and Hostility

Rating: 2.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

"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."

Henry Louis Mencken "Minority Report: H.L. Mencken`s Notebooks"

Egoism

Science and Technology

Rating: 5.60 (Number of Voters: 5)

"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."

Henry Louis Mencken "Minority Report"

Human

Science and Technology

Rating: 4.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Egoism

Wisdom and Stupidity

Rating: 5.75 (Number of Voters: 4)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "Prejudices"

Health and Alcohol

Joy and Sadness

Woman and Man

Rating: 4.50 (Number of Voters: 6)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Life and Death

Time and Passing

Woman and Man

Rating: 3.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Defeates and Mistakes

Rating: 7.00 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Marriage

Trust

Rating: 6.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Life is a dead-end street."

Henry Louis Mencken

Life and Death

Rating: 2.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Nature and Animals

Rating: 5.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

History and Nations

Rating: 4.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Law and Crime

Manners and Ethics

Time and Passing

Rating: 5.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."

Henry Louis Mencken

Various

Rating: 5.60 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Envy

Rating: 4.60 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Art and Culture

Youth and Age

Rating: 4.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Family and Loneliness

Rating: 2.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

"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."

Henry Louis Mencken "Notebooks"

Manners and Ethics

Rating: 4.80 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Health and Alcohol

Rating: 6.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "Chrestomathy"

Woman and Man

Rating: 7.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "Chrestomathy"

Woman and Man

Rating: 5.00 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Politics and Diplomacy

Rating: 3.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Various

Rating: 4.20 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Marriage

Wisdom and Stupidity

Rating: 8.00 (Number of Voters: 2)

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."

Henry Louis Mencken

Intellect, Judgement

Love

Reality and Imagination

Rating: 4.60 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Love

Woman and Man

Rating: 8.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Law and Crime

Rating: 5.00 (Number of Voters: 1)

"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."

Henry Louis Mencken

Love

Rating: 6.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

God and Religion

Rating: 4.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Human

Knowledge, Ignorance

Rating: 5.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Politics and Diplomacy

Rating: 5.60 (Number of Voters: 5)

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

Henry Louis Mencken "A Book of Burlesques"

Life and Death

Rating: 7.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Various

Rating: 4.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

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

Henry Louis Mencken

Sin and Conscience

Rating: 3.67 (Number of Voters: 3)