H. L. Mencken

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.

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 same end.

Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

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

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

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

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.

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

Life is a dead-end street.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

Temptation is a woman's weapon and a man's excuse.

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.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

Time stays, we go.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.