H.L. Mencken Quotes

We are here and it is now. Further than that all knowledge is moonshine.

Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong and that 99% of them are wrong.

A cynic is a man who when he smells flowers looks around for a coffin.

Penetrating so many secrets we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless calmly licking its chops.

Self-respect--the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

Every great wave of popular passion that rolls up on the prairies is dashed to spray when it strikes the hard rocks of Manhattan.

I have often misunderstood men grossly, and I have misrepresented them when I understood them, sacrificing sense to make a phrase. Here, of course, is where even the most conscientious critic often goes aground; he is apt to be an artist before he is a scientist, and the impulse to create something passionately is stronger in him than the impulse to state something accurately.