9 quotes
My belief is that every man after fifty-five is always ill more or less.
Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)
My engagement to AP is off. Her husband made pedantic objections to it.
Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)
For all his compassion for family and close friends he lacked a larger compassion, one that embraced people whom he did not know or care for personally.
Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)
He slept more than any other President, whether by day or by night….He had no ideas, but he was not a nuisance.
Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)
He confronted the moment as he had faced all other painful moments, without the consolation of religion or philosophy. “I can well understand why the more naive sort of people cling to the hope of a reunion after death,” he wrote of that late May day. “But I do not share it.”
Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)
I yield so easily, not because I am not intensely interested, but because I long since came to the conclusion that it is wholly impossible for one human being to understand another’s point of view. Each of us is eternally isolated.
Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)
The Puritan’s utter lack of aesthetic sense, his distrust of all romantic emotion, his unmatchable intolerance of opposition, his unbreakable belief in his own bleak and narrow views, his savage cruelty of attack, his lust for relentless and barbarous persecution—theses things have put an almost unbearable burden upon the exchange of ideas in the United States.
Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)
I noted this almost universal respect for wealth early in life, and have put it to profitable use ever since. That is, I have always pretended to be a great deal better heeled than I am in fact. It has got me deference in quarters where, otherwise, I might have been scorned, and materially eased my days.
Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)
“Away with your croakings about the futility of life,” he wrote in the summer of 1915. “That it is meaningless I grant you, but surely not futile. So long as there is the joy of a job well-done—whether an epic, a fried egg or a murder—there will be plenty of excuses for remaining alive.”
Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)