Posted on 01/28/2006 7:32:20 AM PST by Borges
After drinking two mild Gibson cocktails and enjoying a crackling fire and the lively conversation, Mencken again complained of not feeling well, and before going upstairs to his third-floor back bedroom, again spoke to Cheslock.
"Louis, this is the last time you'll see me," he said to his old friend, Rodgers wrote.
At 9:15 p.m., Cheslock left the Hollins Street residence and drove home through a gathering sleet storm.
Mencken climbed into bed, turned on the radio, and fell asleep listening to a Mozart concert.
Early Sunday morning, when Rancho Brown, a Johns Hopkins Hospital orderly, arrived to help get Mencken bathed and dressed, he was unable to awaken him.
His physician reckoned that Mencken had died in the wee hours of Jan. 29, 1956.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
So shouldn't your headline read 50 years ago tomorrow?
Did Mencken say that?
It is a nice line, but I would prefer to use it as a definition as a "theorist" rather than an "idealist."
Much of the trouble with the French is that they are fiercely committed to theory. It is an insight (which I took from Adam Gopnik) that explains so much. Only in the 90s, for example, did Communism get a really bad name in France. An important book was published documenting the millions of murders in the former USSR and created quite a stir among the surprised French.
Communism continued to attract twenty per cent of the votes there, because it sounded so good in theory.
The French would not be inclined to sample the rose soup. They would be satisfied with what theory told them about it!
Apparently it should.
I'd rather waste time.
People are sensitive about Mencken because he didn't exempt churchmen from his targeted hypocrites, as most wits of the time did. His observations on politicians and preachers alike hit far too close to the mark for some. ;)
Oh, I don't know. I just woke up feeling a little snarky. Then this Eyes dude gets my attention with a really ignorant -- but opinionated -- attitude about a literary figure who most, who are acquainted with his work, regard as an American treausre. He was something of an early Mark Steyn.
But...as you devine and I admit, just feeling snarky had a good deal to do with it ;-)
My favorite Mencken piece is his hilarous evisceration of the chiropractic trade. He kills'em!
My favorite Mencken one-liner, which I have had on my frigidare for fifteen years or so is: "Self-respect is the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious."
"On Being an American" is one of my all-time favorites. It really egged me on as a man in my early twenties. It made me feel like I could/should do better than I was doing at the time.
If memory serves, I believe ol' H.L. couldn't come to understand how we could side with Britain in the two great wars of the 20th century. He thought the Kaiser and Hitler were just two misunderstood dudes.
A slightly backwards way of saying it. I do agree that fans of Mencken will enjoy Steyn. I read a lot of Steyn.
Not true as to Hitler. He may not have believed we had cause to get involved in WWII, but I'd be surprised if you can locate a single pro-Hitler quote.
"Democracy is the theory that the common man knows what he wants, and deserves to get it good and hard."
Why hs is hyped so much is the mystery. HL Mencken, that iconoclastic cad, the genius at skewering social mores and hypocrosy etc...
But as I recall, when one actually reads his stuf it's boring and almost incoherent.
I think Hornbeck was a lot greater.
And Gene Kelly could dance better I'm sure.
Yes.
"The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self-reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word-mongers, uplifters."
"Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons."
--H.L. Menken
A great quote, but even better when the full quote is used:
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."
I'm not a big Mencken fan, but in this case do the additional sentences nail it, or what?
"Every normal man must be tempted at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
"The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts. He ascribes all his failures to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy."
Many more examples of Mencken's brilliance exist, of course. Those are just some of my favorites. I even find myself more at ease with his militant agnosticism as I age (he believed that the liberation of the human mind was best furthered by those "who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving that doubt, after all, was safe -- that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud."). Mencken was fearless -- fearless above all. And he tolerated nonsense not at all.
Excellent quote. He really could put words together, and sometimes had a terrific insight. I'm much more of an Ambrose Bierce fan, though.
lol
Thanks for the post, Borges. Here's my collection of favorite HLM quotes. Don't necessarily agree with all of them, but they're funny and "well put":
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
Imagine the Creator as a stand up commedian - and at once the world becomes explicable.
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.
Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
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.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
Adultery is hitting below the belt. If I ever married the very fact that the woman was my wife would be sufficient to convince me that she was superior to all other women. My vanity is excessive. Wherever I sit is the head of the table.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.
I do not believe in education, and am glad I never went to a university. Beyond the rudiments, it is impossible to teach anything. All the rest the student acquires himself. His teacher merely makes it difficult for him.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals.
Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -and both commonly succeed, and are right.
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another
Evil - That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it
Experience - A series of failures. Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
...one is always most bitter, not toward the author of one's wrongs, but toward the victim of one's wrongs.
Fine - A bribe paid by a rich man to escape the lawful penalty of his crime.
Psychology - The theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow, and is certainly a damned fool.
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