The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s chillun, but that as soon as he has any luck he owes it to the Devil.
The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
Judge – A law student who marks his own examinationpapers.
Jury – A group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
Courtroom – A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds in favor of Judas.
Fine – A bribe paid by a rich man to escape the lawful penalty of his crime. In China such bribes are paid to the judge personally; in America they are paid to him as agent for the public. But it makes no difference to the men who pay them—nor to the men who can’t pay them.
Lawyer – One who protects us against robbers by taking away the temptation.
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.
Arcana Cœlestia
Theology – An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.
Clergyman – A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
Archbishop – A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
The delusion of immortality is what ruined Egypt.
Hymn of Hate, with Coda – If I hate any class of men in this world, it is evangelical Christians, with their bellicose stupidity, their childish belief in devils, their barbarous hoofing of all beauty, dignity and decency. But even evangelical Christians I do not hate when I see their wives.
The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful next time.
Creator – A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
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.
Puritanism – The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Sunday – A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
Christian – One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.
To be a successful clergyman a man must be buttered on both sides.
I read the other day a book defending the Ten Commandments. The best of all arguments for them, however, was omitted. It is that there are not forty of them.
Christian Science – The theory that, since the skyrokets following a wallop in the eye are optical delusions, the wallop itself is a delusion and the eye another.
Christian Science and the Coroner: the initiative and referendum.
A devotee on her knees in some abysmal and mysterious cathedral, the while solemn music sounds, and clouds of incense come down the wind, and priests in luxurious, operatic costumes busy themselves with stately ceremonials in a dead and not too respectable language—this is unquestionably beautiful, particularly if the devotee herself be sightly. But the same devotee aroused to hysterical protestations of faith by the shrieks and contortions of a Methodist dervish in the costume of a Southern member of Congress, her knees trembling with the fear of God, her hands clenched as if to do combat with Beelzebub, her lips discharging hosannas and hallelujahs—this is merely obscene.
The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.
Pastor – One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn’t pay.
The Atheist Confesses – Let us thank God that there is no God.
Christendom may be defined briefly as that part of the world in which, if a man stands up in public and swears with any show of earnestness that he is a Christian, all his auditors will laugh.
God must love the poor, said Lincoln, or he wouldn’t have made so many of them. He must love the rich, or he wouldn’t divide so much mazuma among so few of them.
Show me a Puritan and I’ll show you a son-of-a-bitch.
This and That
In the long run all battles are lost, and so are all wars.
Osteopath – One who argues that all human ills are caused by the pressure of hard bone upon soft tissue. The proof of his theory is to be found in the heads of those who believe it.
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
Pathology would remain a lovely science, even if there were no therapeutics, just as seismology is a lovely science, though no one knows how to stop earthquakes.
American Proverbs of Tomorrow – Set a ganov to catch a ganov. There’s many a slip ’twixt the shidduchin and the chuppa. Many a true word is spoken by a marshallik. No man was ever as fromm as a bachur looks. The goy is not afraid of the cherem.
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
What the South really needs is fewer scrub bulls—on the human level.
The Americans are the illegitimate children of the English.
To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin.
Anyhow, the hole in the doughnut is at least digestible.
Anti-Vivisectionist – One who gags at a guinea-pig and swallows a baby.
Psychotherapy – The theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow, and is certainly a damned ijjit.
Is it hot in the rolling-mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is very easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another “Rosenkavalier.”
Eugenics is the theory that charm in a woman is the same as charm in a prize-fighter.
It is only in countries where there is no wine, e.g., England, that the answer to Genesis IV, 9 is yes.
XXXI. APPENDIX
Catechism
From MISCELLANEOUS NOTES, PREJUDICES: FIFTH SERIES,
1926, p. 304.
First printed in the American Mercury, Sept., 1924, p. 63
Q. If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?
A. Why do men go to zoos?
Epitaph
From the Smart Set, Dec., 1921, p. 33
IF, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 12, 1880, and died there during the night of January 28–9, 1956. A son of August and Anna (Abhau) Mencken, he was educated privately and at the Baltimore Polytechnic. He married (August 27, 1930) Sara Powell Haardt, who died on May 31, 1935.
Mencken became a reporter for the Baltimore Morning Herald in 1899, its city editor in 1903, and editor of the Evening Herald in 1905. He served on the staff of the Baltimore Sun from 1906 to 1910 and on that of the Evening Sun from 1910 to 1917 and again from 1920 to 1935. But he never ceased to be associated with the Sun papers, and was for many years a director of their publishers, the A. S. Abell Company. He became literary critic of the Smart Set in 1908, and was its co-editor (with George Jean Nathan) from 1914 to 1923. With George Jean Nathan he founded The American Mercury and was its sole editor from 1924 to 1933.
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Mencken Chrestomathy (Vintage) Page 71