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Quote by H. L. Mencken

“What I admire most in any man is a serene spirit, a steady freedom from moral indignation, and all-embracing tolerance--in brief,what is commonly called sportsmanship.”

Quote by H. L. Mencken

Book:Mencken Chrestomathy

Work

Mencken Chrestomathy

This book compiles a selection of writings by the American journalist, critic, and satirist H.L. Mencken, showcasing his wit and insight on various subjects including politics, culture, and society. more

Author

H. L. Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. Born on September 12, 1880, and passing away on January 29, 1956, Mencken is renowned for his significant contributions to American culture and language, particularly through his satirical essays and critical analyses of the American establishment. more

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“Nature abhors a moron.”

Nature Stupidity Moron

Book:Mencken Chrestomathy

Source: Mencken Chrestomathy

“The aim of poetry, it appears, is to fill the mind with lofty thoughts--not to give it joy, but to give it a grand and somewhat gaudy sense of virtue. The essay is a weapon against the degenerate tendencies of the age. The novel, properly conceived, is a means of uplifting the spirit; its aim is to inspire, not merely to satisfy the low curiosity of man in man.”

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

“The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style; he is even capable of something approaching a purely aesthetic emotion. But he fears this aesthetic emotion as an insinuating distraction from his chief business in life: the sober consideration of the all-important problem of conduct. Art is a temptation, a seduction, a Lorelei, and the Good Man may safely have traffic with it when it is broken to moral uses--in other words, when its innocence is pumped out of it, and it is purged of gusto.”

Source: Prejudices Second Series

“One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.”

Light Eye Lying Behinds Cases Products Discovery Inevitable His Eyes Bombs Liars Flash Jumping Involuntary Quackery

Book:Mencken Chrestomathy

Source: Mencken Chrestomathy

“There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.”

America Fashion Institutions

Book:Mencken Chrestomathy

Source: Mencken Chrestomathy

“As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all resolute and honest dealing with what, after all, must be every healthy literature's elementary materials.”

Ifs Ideas Literature Honest Materials Healthy Democratic Strikes Distrust Prevailing Paralyzed Resolute American Literature Platitudes

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

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

“If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.”

Ifs Literature Critics Orderly American Literature Allan Poe

Author:H. L. Mencken

“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.”

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

“Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.”

Literature Despite Remarkable Mediocrity Respectable American Literature

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

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

“Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens--of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases as brackish as so many lumps of sodium hyposulphite.”

Writing Whole Literature Novel Reader Scene Phrases Cherish Awkward Spoiled Lumps American Literature Bad Writing Sodium

Book:A book of prefaces

Source: A book of prefaces