This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I read the other day a book defending the Ten Commandments. The best of all arguments for them, however, was omitted. It is that there are not forty of them.
There, at the top of the table, alone amongst all these women, stooped over his ample plateful, with his napkin tied around his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, drips of gravy dribbling gravy from him lips. His eyes were bloodshot and he had a little pigtail tied up with a black ribbon. This was the Marquis' father-in-law... he had led a... Read more tumultuous life of debauchery and dueling, of wagers made and women abducted, had squandered his fortune and terrified his whole family... Emma's eyes kept coming back to this old man with the sagging lips, as though to something wonderfully majestic. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of a queen!
Love |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame. All animal breeders know how difficult it is to maintain a fine strain. The universe seems to be in a conspiracy to encourage the endless reproduction of peasants and Socialists, but a subtle and mysterious opposition stands eternally against the reproduction of philosophers.
Love |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
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.
Controversy | Love | People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
In the superman Nietzsche gave the world the conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. Remained there but still a problem and it was this: When the Superman Appears at last on earth, what then? Will there be another super superman to follow and another super-superman after that? In the end, man will become the equal of the creator of the universe, whoever or whatever He may be? Or will a period of decline after eating, with long return down the line, down through the superman to man again, and then on to the anthropoid ape, to the lower mammals, to the asexual cell, and, finally, to mere inert matter, gas, ether, and empty space?
Those around him were students like himself. They talked about their professors, and about their mistresses. Much he cared about professors! Had he a mistress? To avoid being a witness of their enjoyment, he came as late as possible.
Love |
A kiss on the beach when there is a full moon is the closest thing to heaven.
Worth |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
Worth |
The truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.
Body |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
If the work of the average man required half the mental agility and readiness of resource of the work of the average prostitute, the average man would be constantly on the verge of starvation.
Love |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.
Worth |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
Television | Wrong |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Jury: A group of twelve man who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
Worth |