H. L. Mencken - A Mencken chrestomathy (1949)

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Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

H. L. Mencken
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

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

H. L. Mencken
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

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

H. L. Mencken
Jury — A group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.

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

H. L. Mencken
Wealth — Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.

H. L. Mencken
Archbishop – A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

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

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

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

H. L. Mencken
In every unbeliever's heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic's Hell.

H. L. Mencken
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

H. L. Mencken
Whenever a husband and a wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.

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

H. L. Mencken
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

H. L. Mencken
Theology — An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.

H. L. Mencken
Sunday — A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.

H. L. Mencken
In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnaught, and man from an open raft.

H. L. Mencken
When women kiss, it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.

H. L. Mencken
Self-respect — The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

H. L. Mencken
Pathology would remain a lovely science, even if there were no therapeutics, just as seismology is a lovely science, though no one knows how to stop earthquakes.

H. L. Mencken
Osteopath — One who argues that all human ills are caused by the pressure of hard bone on soft tissue. The proof of his theory is to be found in the heads of those who believe it.

H. L. Mencken
A lawyer is one who protects you against robbers by taking away the temptation.

H. L. Mencken
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

H. L. Mencken
A man who has throttled a bad impulse has at least some consolation in his agonies, but a man who has throttled a good one is in a bad way indeed.

H. L. Mencken
Immorality is the morality of those who are having a better time. You will never convince the average farmer's mare that the late Maud S. was not dreadfully immoral.

H. L. Mencken
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.

H. L. Mencken
I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.

H. L. Mencken