H. L. Mencken Life Quotations

Everyman is thoroughly happy twice in his life, just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one.

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. There is in every living creature an obscure but powerful impulse to active functioning. Life demands to be lived. Inaction, save as a measure of recuperation between bursts of activity, is painful and dangerous to the healthy organism- in fact, it is almost impossible. Only the dying can be really idle.

Life is a dead-end street.

Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.

The average man gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him.

It is more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents.

What the meaning of human life may be I don't know: I incline to suspect that it has none.

The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

The townspeople are morons, yokels, peasants and genus homo boobiensis...surrounded by gaping primates from the upland vallies.

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.