Henry Louis Mencken: Frases em inglês (página 11)

“Democracy is shot through with this delight in the incredible, this banal mysticism. I have alluded to its touching acceptance of the faith that progress is illimitable and ordained of God - that every human problem, in the very nature of things, may be solved.”

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H.L. Mencken

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

“The professor must be an obscurantist or he is nothing; he has a special and unmatchable talent for dullness, his central aim is not to expose the truth clearly, but to exhibit his profundity, his esotericity - in brief to stagger sophomores and other professors.”

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H.L. Mencken

Fonte: 1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 15 "The Dismal Science"

“It is moral by his code to get into office by false pretences. It is moral to change convictions overnight. Anything is moral that furthers the main concern of his soul, which is to keep a place at the public trough.”

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H.L. Mencken

On elected politicians
1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

“When women kiss, it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Fonte: Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=TqEFAQAAIAAJ&q=%22when+women+kiss+it+always+reminds+one+of+prize+fighters+shaking+hands%22&pg=PA619#v=onepage

“Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't, they'd be married, too.”

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H.L. Mencken

A Little Book in C major http://books.google.com/books?id=EAJbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Bachelors+know+more+about+women+than+married+men+If+they+didn't+they'd+be+married+too%22&pg=PA61#v=onepage (1916) ; later published in A Mencken Crestomathy (1949)
1910s

“A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meets the national fancy for the terse, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative.”

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H.L. Mencken livro The American Language

Fonte: The American Language (1919), Ch. 5

“To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies — the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said — there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.”

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H.L. Mencken

Fonte: 1910s, A Book of Prefaces (1917), Ch. 2

“If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x × y is less than y.”

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H.L. Mencken

Sententiæ: The Citizen and the State
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“…I have given my whole life to newspapers. I am convinced that they have abandoned their functions, and in an abject and ignominious manner, in the present war. Nine-tenths of them, and even more than nine-tenths, print the official blather without any attempt to scrutinize it… It is a disgraceful spectacle, but I do not believe that anything can be done about it. Roosevelt has taken the press into camp as certainly has he has taken the Supreme Court. It has ceased altogether to be independent and has become docilely official.”

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H.L. Mencken

June 10, 1944
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“The more noisy Negro leaders, by depicting all whites as natural and implacable enemies to their race, have done it a great disservice. Large numbers of whites who were formerly very friendly to it, and willing to go to great lengths to help it, are now resentful and suspicious.”

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H.L. Mencken

213
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.”

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H.L. Mencken

412
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.”

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H.L. Mencken

33
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”

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H.L. Mencken

Des MacHale, Wit, Andrews McMeel Publishing, Kansas City (KS), 2003, ISBN 978-0-7407-3330-7, page 197 https://books.google.ca/books?id=Dhlgd_Af1C4C&pg=PA197
Misattributed

“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.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Democratic man, dreaming eternally of Utopias, is ever a prey to shibboleths.”

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H.L. Mencken

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

“The allurement that [women] hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.”

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H.L. Mencken

"The Incomparable Buzzsaw", The Smart Set, May 1919 http://books.google.com/books?id=ySscAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+allurement+that+they+hold+out+to+men+is+precisely+the+allurement+that+Cape+Hatteras+holds+out+to+sailors+they+are+enormously+dangerous+and+hence+enormously+fascinating%22&pg=PA54#v=onepage; later published in Prejudices: Second Series, Ch. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=0-A4AQAAMAAJ&q=%22The+allurement+that+they+hold+out+to+men+is+precisely+the+allurement+that+Cape+Hatteras+holds+out+to+sailors+they+are+enormously+dangerous+and+hence+enormously+fascinating%22&pg=PA236#v=onepage (1920)
1910s

“Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers.”

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H.L. Mencken

298
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“I was wise to quit writing for the Sun back in January, 1941, for it was obvious by then that Roosevelt would horn into the war soon or late, and I knew by bitter experience in the last war that I'd be throttled at once. Since then I have thought out many likely articles, but not one of them has been printable. In these days, indeed, my very vocabulary is prohibited. I couldn't so much as mention Roosevelt or Churchill or any of the other frauds without having to face a savage official onslaught, with all blows directed below the belt. The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.”

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H.L. Mencken

April 1, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of Milton is that he functions as a Milton.”

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H.L. Mencken

Fonte: 1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 3