Henry Louis Mencken cytaty

strona 7

„Czas wiele legalizuje – również w dziedzinie moralności.”

„Tępy człowiek jest zawsze pewny siebie, a człowiek pewny siebie jest zawsze tępy.”

„Każdy normalny człowiek ma od czasu do czasu ochotę splunąć w dłonie, zatrzeć ręce, wywiesić czarną flagę na maszcie i zacząć podrzynać gardła.”

„Miłość to złudzenie, że jedna kobieta jest inna niż wszystkie pozostałe.”

„Całujące się kobiety przypominają zawsze bokserów, którzy podają sobie ręce przed walką.”

„Nieżonaci znacznie więcej wiedzą o kobietach niż żonaci – inaczej także byliby żonaci.”

„Pobierając się, mężczyzna i kobieta stają się tylko jednym; główna trudność to ustalić którym.”

„Jeżeli kobieta światowa mówi „nie” – to znaczy „być może”.
Jeżeli mówi „być może” – to znaczy „tak”.
Jeżeli mówi „tak” – to znaczy, że nie jest kobietą światową.
Jeżeli dyplomata mówi „tak” – to znaczy „być może”.
Jeżeli mówi „być może” – to znaczy „nie”.
Jeżeli mówi „nie””

„Mężczyźni mają dużo szczęśliwsze życie niż kobiety; zwykle później się żenią i wcześniej umierają.”

„Każdy ludzki problem ma eleganckie, proste rozwiązanie i zawsze jest ono złe.”

„Jakakolwiek byłaby szczęśliwa w małżeństwie, zawsze miłym jej będzie odkrycie, że istnieje jakiś sympatyczny mężczyzna, który życzyłby sobie, żeby była wolna.”

„Sumienie to wewnętrzny głos ostrzegający nas, że ktoś może patrzeć.”

„Jestem przekonany, że lata szkolne są najbardziej nieszczęśliwymi z całego okresu egzystencji ludzkiej. Są pełne nudy, niezrozumiałych zadań, nowych i nieprzyjemnych obrządków oraz brutalnego pogwałcenia zdrowego rozsądku i przyzwoitości.”

„Cynik to człowiek, który, poczuwszy woń kwiatów, rozgląda się za trumną.”

„Demokracja to kult szakali wyznawany przez osły.”

„Dążenie do zbawienia ludzkości jest najczęściej maską, pod którą ukrywa się dążenie do zdobycia władzy.”

„Miłość jest tryumfem wyobraźni nad inteligencją.”

“My business is not prognosis, but diagnosis. I am not engaged in therapeutics, but in pathology.”

“To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.”

“Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual.”

“I don't have prejudice, I hate everyone equally.”

“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.”

“Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.”

“At the bottom of Puritanism one finds envy of the fellow who is having a better time in the world, and hence hatred of him. At the bottom of democracy one finds the same thing. This is why all Puritans are democrats and all democrats are Puritans.”

“If there is one mental vice, indeed, which sets off the American people from all other folks who walk the earth … it is that of assuming that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that ninety-nine percent of them are wrong.”

“What are the hallmarks of a competent writer of fiction? The first, it seems to me, is that he should be immensely interested in human beings, and have an eye sharp enough to see into them, and a hand clever enough to draw them as they are. The second is that he should be able to set them in imaginary situations which display the contents of their psyches effectively, and so carry his reader swiftly and pleasantly from point to point of what is called a good story.”

“An aristocratic society may hold that a soldier or a man of learning is superior to a rich manufacturer or banker, but in a democratic society the latter are inevitably put higher, if only because their achievement is more readily comprehended by the inferior man, and he can more easily imagine himself, by some favour of God, duplicating it.”

“Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.”

“Jury — A group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.”

“Jealousy is the theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.”

“It is a fact that no man improves much after the age of 60 and after 65, most suffer a really alarming decline. I could give some examples, but at the advice of my publisher will refrain from doing so.”

“The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.”

“A man may be a fool and not know it — but not if he is married.”

“In every unbeliever's heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic's Hell.”

“School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.”

“God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“…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.”

“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.”