Quotes from Smart Set — H. L. Mencken
1880–1956 United States
← All quotes by H. L. Mencken
5 quotes
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Smart Set (1910)
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.
Smart Set (1910)
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.
Smart Set (1910)
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.
Smart Set (1910)
Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.
Smart Set (1910)