“I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.”
“There are people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.”
71
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
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H.L. Mencken 281
American journalist and writer 1880–1956Related quotes
1910s, "Natural Law", 32 Harvard Law Review 40, 41 (1918)
[Morgan, Forrest, Shakespeare—the Man, published in the Prospective Review, July 1853, The works of Walter Bagehot, vol. 1, 1891, Hartford, Connecticut, Travelers Insurance Company, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101064786716;view=1up;seq=373, 265–266 of 255–302]
Shakespeare—the Man (1853)
“The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.”
1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)
Context: Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.