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Quote by H. L. Mencken

“What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?”

Quote by H. L. Mencken

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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“The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.”

Men World Way Past Hate Democracy He Man Ocean Democrat Smoking Sailor Passengers Stalking Cigar Puritanism

Author:H. L. Mencken

“[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.”

Men Sound Democracy Crime Prove Argument Offense Prove It

Book:Mencken Chrestomathy

Source: Mencken Chrestomathy

“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.”

Men Spirit Freedom Moral Tolerance Admire Steady Serene Indignation Sportsmanship Moral Indignation

Book:Mencken Chrestomathy

Source: Mencken Chrestomathy

“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