Author: H.L. Mencken Page 3

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Communication Occupations Reading/Writing Work

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 or chemistry.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Beliefs People Religion Sex Women

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Communication Love Marriage Sex

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Beliefs Children Family Parents Religion

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Characteristics Lies People Truth

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

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Communication Conversation Husbands Marriage Wives

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Communication People Speech

Wealth is any income that is at least one hundred dollars a year more than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Money Wealth Wives

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
America Golf Government Sports

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Emotions Intelligence Love Memory

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

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Characteristics Food/Drink

A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
People Success

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Beliefs Failure God Success

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Beliefs Husbands Marriage Wives

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Beliefs Communication Reading/Writing Religion

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

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Characteristics

Creator: a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Emotions Laughter

No man can hear his telephone ring without wishing heartily that Alexander Graham Bell had been run over by an ice wagon at the age of four.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Things

A man always blames the woman who fooled him, in the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Men People Women

Optimist: The sort of man who marries his sister’s best friend.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Friends Marriage Men

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

(1880 – 1956) journalist, essayist, editor & satirist
Characteristics People