H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also earned him attention. The term Menckenian has entered multiple dictionaries to describe anything of or pertaining to Mencken, including his combative rhetorical and prose styles.

Quotes

Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn't believe he is dead.
Love: The delusion that one woman differs from another.
Alimony: the ransom the happy pay to the devil.
The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing they were dead and in heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in hell.
Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.
Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
Judge: a law student who marks his own papers.
Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing, they marry later; for another thing they die earlier.
Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterilized at once.
The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
Congress consists of one third, more or less, scoundrels; two thirds, more or less, idiots; and three thirds, more or less, poltroons.
Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebums and smaller adrenal glands.
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.

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