Henry Louis Mencken, (1880-1956) American Editor, Author, Critic, Humorist Quotes

School-days... Are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.

Unionism seldom, if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguard bad work.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that % of them are wrong.

Legend is a lie that has attained the dignity of age.

Wherever I sit is the head of the table.

Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them.

No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear -- fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

To sum up: . The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making , revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.