Quotes from H. L. Mencken

No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.

The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.

All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.

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

Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma'ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.

Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.

Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.

A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum.

PROHIBITIONIST. The sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.

BREVITY. The quality that makes cigarettes, speeches, love affairs and ocean voyages bearable.

CIVILIZATION. A concerted effort to remedy the blunders and check the practical joking of God.

UNIVERSITY... In the great American universities men are ranked as follows: 1. Seducers; 2. Fullbacks; 3. Boozefighters; 4. Pitchers and Catchers; 5. Poker players; 6. Scholars...

FRIENDSHIP. A mutual belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks, hobgoblins and imbecilities.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.

Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.