One of my favorite curmudgeons is H.L. Mencken, author, journalist, and essayist. Nearly every sentence he ever wrote seems to be quotable, but these are a few of my favorites.
Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian businessman.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
Nature abhors a moron.
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
The only really respectable Protestants are the Fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell. It is a business almost indistinguishable from that of a seller of snake-oil for rheumatism.
God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters.
spydersden 