281 definitions
Thinkers › H. L. Mencken › Top 300
H. L. Mencken: top 300 quotes
281 definitions
Love (n.) is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
Love (n.) is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia.
Love (n.) is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
Love (n.) is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
Love (n.) is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Justice (n.) stings while injustice is relatively easy to bear.
Justice (n.) is to bear what stings.
Justice (n.) is painful — injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
The Critic (n.) is one involved not in prognosis, but in diagnosis... not therapeutics, but pathology.
The Critic (n.) boasts he is hard to please when nobody tries to please him.
Privilege (n.) is what people truly value in this world -- not rights.
Art (n.) 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.
Marriage (n.) is held together by mutual trust rather than by mutual interest.
Marriage (n.) is more in men's favor than women's... for one thing they marry later... for another thing they die earlier.
Marriage (n.) is the longest sentence in the english language that can be formed with two words is 'I do'.
Truth (n.) is, in the arts and in life, not to be discovered. There is only error to be exposed.
Truth's (n.) final test is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
Truth (n.) is able to survive only when it is the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
Truth (n.) is something somehow discreditable to someone.
Happiness (n.) is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being.
Happiness (n.) is not everything : a hog is always happier than a man, and bacteria are always happier than hogs.