Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956) was an American journalist, editor, literary critic, and historian of language. He became celebrated as an iconoclastic critic of American society and frequently condemned its Puritanism and hypocrisy.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Mencken became editor of the Baltimore Herald, and then joined the Sunpapers in 1906. From 1908 to 1923, he worked with the Smart Set, and in 1924 he and the Drama Critic George Jean Nathan founded the American Mercury, which Mencken edited until 1933.
Mencken became a major influence on the American literary scene of the 1920s and supported many writers such as Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson. Mencken’s main work is The American Language (1919, revised 1921, 1923, 1936; supplementary volumes, 1945, 1948,) wherein he opposed the dominance of European culture in America. This momentous attempt to organize the vigor and versatility of colloquial American usage made Mencken the leading authority on the language of his country.
Mencken’s reviews of American social and cultural norms and miscellaneous essays filled six volumes appropriately titled Prejudices (1919–27.) His autobiographical trilogy, Happy Days (1940,) Newspaper Days (1941,) and Heathen Days (1943,) is devoted to his experiences in journalism.
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Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
—H. L. Mencken
Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Confidence
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Faith, Belief
The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Thinking
The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Work, Stress
It is only doubt that creates. It is the minority that counts.
—H. L. Mencken
A great literature is chiefly the product of inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Literature
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Love
There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Idleness
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