1,045 Quotes by H. L. Mencken

  • Author H. L. Mencken
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    Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant.

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  • Author H. L. Mencken
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    When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.

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  • Author H. L. Mencken
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    The ideal way to get rid of any infectious disease would be to shoot instantly every person who comes down with it.

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  • Author H. L. Mencken
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    A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

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  • Author H. L. Mencken
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    [Texas is] the place where there are the most cows and the least milk and the most rivers and the least water in them, and where you can look the farthest to see the least.

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  • Author H. L. Mencken
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    Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.

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  • Author H. L. Mencken
  • Quote

    When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

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