H.L. MenckenThinkers

40s (age) is a man's best years. after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.

Academics is rarely represented by pretty fellows, and in many cases their appearance tends to discourage a love of study in the young.

America is a country where no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of its public.

Art is tasked with editing nature so as to make it coherent and lovely. The artist is a sort of impassioned proofreader, blue-pencilling the bad spelling of God.

The Artist is not a reporter, but a great teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is, but as it ought to be.

An Association is held together by mutual trust rather than by mutual interest. Our friends, marriages, etc, seldom profit us but they make us feel safe.

Birth control is not very coherent. Catholic women are allowed to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, but not physics or chemistry.

The Book is of two kinds: Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.

Boredom is the basic fact of human existence, not tragedy. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Change is not progress.