H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken

… essayist and editor, was born on this date in 1880. Some Mencken quotes:

• The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with…
• It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
• Courtroom—A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds in favor of Judas.
• It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
• The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.
• The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
• Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
• It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
• Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
• Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
• Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
• In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.