H. L. Mencken Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

H. L. Mencken
Remorse — Regret that one waited so long to do it.

H. L. Mencken
Truth — Something somehow discreditable to someone.

H. L. Mencken
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

H. L. Mencken
Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.

H. L. Mencken
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

H. L. Mencken
Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals.

H. L. Mencken
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

H. L. Mencken
The virulence of the national appetite for bogus revelation.

H. L. Mencken
For a professor must have a theory, as a dog must have fleas.

H. L. Mencken
Judge — A law student who marks his own examination-papers.

H. L. Mencken
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

H. L. Mencken
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

H. L. Mencken
There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.

H. L. Mencken
The only really happy people are married women and single men.

H. L. Mencken
The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.

H. L. Mencken
Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.

H. L. Mencken
Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull

H. L. Mencken
Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.

H. L. Mencken
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.

H. L. Mencken
A man may be a fool and not know it — but not if he is married.

H. L. Mencken
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.

H. L. Mencken
Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.

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

H. L. Mencken
It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.

H. L. Mencken
I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes.

H. L. Mencken
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

H. L. Mencken
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

H. L. Mencken
The scent of frying astronomers long ago ceased to ascend to Yahweh.

H. L. Mencken
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

H. L. Mencken