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H.L.
Mencken
"Freedom
of press
is limited to those who own one."
— H.L. Mencken
"Mr. Mencken is so effective just because his appeal is not from
mind to mind but from viscera to viscera. If  you
analyze his arguments you destroy their effect. You cannot take them in
detail and examine their implications. You have to judge him totally,
roughly, approximately, without definition, as you would a barrage of
artillery, for the general destruction rather than for the accuracy of
the individual shots. He presents an experience, and if he gets you, he
gets you not by reasoned conviction, but by a conversion which you may
or may not be able to dress up later as a philosophy. If he succeeds
with you, he implants in you a sense of sin, and then he revives you
with grace, and disposes you to a new pride in excellence and in a
non-gregarious excellence."
"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."
— H.L. Mencken
From
"A
Neglected Anniversary"
Mencken commemorated the supposed introduction of the bathtub into the
United States with this article in the New York Evening Mail, Dec. 28,
1917. It was taken seriously, but of course he made the whole thing up:
"The thing, in fact, became a public matter, and before long
there was bitter and double- headed opposition to the new invention,
which had been promptly imitated by several other wealthy
Cincinnatians. On the one hand it was denounced as an epicurean and
obnoxious toy from England, designed to corrupt the democratic
simplicity of the Republic, and on the other hand it was attacked by
the medical faculty as dangerous to health and a certain inviter of
"phthisic, rheumatic fevers, inflammation of the lungs and the
whole category of zymotic diseases."
(From the Western Medical Repository, April 23, 1843.)
"The noise of the controversy soon reached other cities, and in
more than one place medical opposition reached such strength that it
was reflected  in
legislation. Late in 1843, for example, the Philadelphia Common
Council considered an ordinance prohibiting bathing between November 1
and March 15, and it failed of passage by but two votes. During the
same year the legislature of Virginia laid a tax of $30 a year on all
bathtubs that might be set up, and in Hartford, Providence, Charleston
and Wilmington (Del.) special and very heavy water rates were levied
upon those who had them. Boston, very early in 1845, made bathing
unlawful except upon medical advice, but the ordinance was never
enforced and in 1862 it was repealed."
"One
seldom discovers a true
believer that is worth knowing."
— H.L. Mencken
"When we complained to the English we didn't get no more
satisfaction. Almost every day we give them plenty of warning that the
politicians over there was doing things to us that they didn't have no
right to do. We kept on reminding them who we was, and what we was doing
here, and how we come to come here. We asked them to get us a square
deal, and told them that if this thing kept on we'd have to do something
about it and maybe they wouldn't like it. But the more we talked, the
more they didn't pay no attention to us. Therefore, if they ain't for us
they must be agin us, and we are ready to give them the fight of their
lives, or to shake hands when it is over."
"There
is only one justification
for having sinned, and that
is to be glad of it."
— H.L. Mencken
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