Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
Author
H. L. Mencken
113 quotations
About H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also earned him attention. The term Menckenian has entered multiple dictionaries to describe anything of or pertaining to Mencken, including his combative rhetorical and prose styles.
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by H. L. MenckenIf women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later for another thing, they die earlier.
Bachelors know more about women than married men if they didn't they'd be married too.
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
Advertisement
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
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.
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.
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.
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
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 it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that…
Time stays, we go.
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later for another thing, they die earlier.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.