Quotessence
Home / Books / H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series

H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series

Book by H. L. Mencken · 3 quotes · Men, Literature, American Literature

Filter quotes by topic

H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series Quotes

“One is conscious of no brave and noble earnestness in it, of no generalized passion for intellectual and spiritual adventure, of no organized determination to think things out. What is there is a highly self-conscious and insipid correctness, a bloodless respectability submergence of matter in manner--in brief, what is there is the feeble, uninspiring quality of German painting and English music.”

“This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high attainments in their specialties-for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and Osler-men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had heard them stated.”