1,045 Quotes by H. L. Mencken

How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman’s laugh.

Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.

Suicide is a belated acquiescence in the opinion of one’s wife’s relatives.

Time stays, we go.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

The ants and the bees are, in many ways, far more intelligent and ingenious; they manage their government with vastly less quarreling, wastefulness and imbecility.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins,a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line

Democratic man can understand the aims and aspirations of capitalism; they are, greatly magnified, simply his own aims and aspirations.