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Frasi di Henry Louis Mencken
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Henry Louis Mencken è stato un giornalista e saggista statunitense, nonché curatore editoriale, conosciuto come il "Saggio di Baltimora", ed è noto soprattutto per la pungente satira della società puritana del suo Paese e per i suoi studi di linguistica, attività che lo hanno reso uno dei più influenti scrittori statunitensi della prima metà del XX secolo. Wikipedia  

✵ 12. Settembre 1880 – 29. Gennaio 1956
Henry Louis Mencken photo
Henry Louis Mencken: 302   frasi 7   Mi piace

Henry Louis Mencken frasi celebri

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“L'amore è come la guerra: facile da iniziare, ma molto difficile da interrompere.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“La democrazia è una forma di religione. È l'adorazione degli sciacalli da parte dei somari.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Citato in Le Formiche, § 1814

“Il fatto però che le minacce dell'inferno abbiano la loro utilità sociale non è un argomento a sostegno della verità della religione; è semplicemente un argomento a sfavore della specie umana.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

“La vera patria delle apocalissi e delle escatologie è l'India. Si sono inventati più paradisi e inferni qui, che in tutto il resto del mondo, e la loro influenza è visibile in tutte le teologie moderne.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

“Nessun uomo merita una fiducia illimitata – nei casi migliori, il suo tradimento è solo posposto nell'attesa di una tentazione sufficiente.”

Henry Louis Mencken

The Sceptic, da The Smart Set, maggio 1919

“Si deve certamente ammettere che la religione è una delle più grandi invenzioni che mai si siano avute sulla terra.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

Frasi sulla religione di Henry Louis Mencken

“La verità è che la teologia cristiana – come ogni altra teologia – non è soltanto contraria allo spirito scientifico, lo è anche ad ogni altro tentativo di pensiero razionale. […] L'unico vero modo per conciliare scienza e religione è di istituire qualcosa che non sia scienza e qualcosa che non sia religione.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

“La religione fu inventata dall'uomo, così come dall'uomo furono inventate l'agricoltura e la ruota, e in essa non v'è assolutamente nulla che giustifichi la credenza che i suoi inventori avessero l'ausilio di potenze più alte, terrene o d'altra natura. In alcuni suoi aspetti, essa è estremamente geniale, in altri di commovente bellezza, ma in altri ancora è così assurda da rasentare l'imbecillità.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

“La cosa principale è che il cristianesimo, sola fra le religioni del mondo moderno, ha ereditato un opulento contenuto estetico, ed è pertanto esso stesso un'opera d'arte. La forza di umana attrattiva di tutta questa poesia è così potente che promette di sopravvivere alla decadenza del cristianesimo.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

“È giusto rispettare la religione degli altri, ma solo nel senso e nella misura in cui si rispetta la loro convinzione di avere una moglie bella e dei figli intelligenti.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

Henry Louis Mencken Frasi e Citazioni

“Qualsiasi persona normale di tanto in tanto prova la tentazione di sputarsi nelle mani, issare la bandiera nera e cominciare a tagliare le gole.”

Henry Louis Mencken
Sulle persone

“Naturalmente è l'inferno, non il paradiso, che rende potenti i sacerdoti, perché – dopo migliaia di anni di cosiddetta civiltà – la paura rimane l'unico comune denominatore dell'umanità. […] L'essenza di tutta la moralità sacerdotale è la ricompensa, e senza un inferno di qualsivoglia specie, o un altro genere di ricompensa, essa diviene retorica, senza alcun significato.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

Inferno , Sulla paura

“Nulla può venir fuori dall'artista che non sia nell'uomo.”

Henry Louis Mencken

dai Pregiudizi, Quinta serie

“La teologia è il tentativo di spiegare l'inconoscibile nei termini di ciò che non vale la pena conoscere.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

“Il valore d'un sacrificio non è provato dalla causa che vi sta dietro. Migliaia di persone hanno rinunciato alla propria vita con altrettanto coraggio di Gesù, per cause infinitamente meno elevate e luminose. Tutti i martiri, in verità, credono di riuscire a scuotere il mondo, anche se nessun altro vi riuscì come lui.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

Coraggio , Sulla verità , Sulle persone , Sul mondo

“Nessun uomo o donna realmente civile crede oggi nella cosmogonia della Genesi, né nella realtà dell'inferno, e neppure in qualche altra delle antiche imbecillità che ancora godono considerazione presso il grosso popolo. […] In altre parole, l'uomo civile è divenuto il dio di se stesso. Quando incontra delle difficoltà, non ne dà più la colpa all'inimicizia inscrutabile di potenze lontane e ineffabili; le attribuisce alla propria ignoranza ed incompetenza.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

Inferno , Su Dio , Realtà , lontano

“Ci vuol tempo per strappare alla fede e per educare allo scetticismo; tempo, e non poco sforzo e dolore. Soltanto lo scettico della terza generazione è veramente sicuro: suo nonno deve aver accettato il denaro del Diavolo quando era ancora celibe.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Trattato sugli dei

Tempo , Sul denaro , Sforzo , Sul dolore

“Un idealista è uno che, notando che una rosa odora meglio d'un cavolo, ne conclude che se ne possa cavare una minestra migliore.”

Henry Louis Mencken

da A book of burlesques

Divertente

“La coscienza è la voce interiore che ci avverte che qualcuno potrebbe vederci.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Citato in Le Formiche, § 1871

“I grandi artisti non sono mai puritani, e di rado anche rispettabili nel senso normale della parola.”

Henry Louis Mencken

dai Pregiudizi, Prima serie

Senso

“Quando le donne si baciano vengono sempre in mente i lottatori professionisti che si stringono la mano.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Citato in Le Formiche, § 1391

Sulle donne

Henry Louis Mencken: Frasi in inglese

“Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.”

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H.L. Mencken

412
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.”

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H.L. Mencken

33
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”

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H.L. Mencken

Des MacHale, Wit, Andrews McMeel Publishing, Kansas City (KS), 2003, ISBN 978-0-7407-3330-7, page 197 https://books.google.ca/books?id=Dhlgd_Af1C4C&pg=PA197
Misattributed

“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.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Democratic man, dreaming eternally of Utopias, is ever a prey to shibboleths.”

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H.L. Mencken

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

“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.”

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H.L. Mencken

"The Incomparable Buzzsaw", The Smart Set, May 1919 http://books.google.com/books?id=ySscAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+allurement+that+they+hold+out+to+men+is+precisely+the+allurement+that+Cape+Hatteras+holds+out+to+sailors+they+are+enormously+dangerous+and+hence+enormously+fascinating%22&pg=PA54#v=onepage; later published in Prejudices: Second Series, Ch. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=0-A4AQAAMAAJ&q=%22The+allurement+that+they+hold+out+to+men+is+precisely+the+allurement+that+Cape+Hatteras+holds+out+to+sailors+they+are+enormously+dangerous+and+hence+enormously+fascinating%22&pg=PA236#v=onepage (1920)
1910s

“Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers.”

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H.L. Mencken

298
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“I was wise to quit writing for the Sun back in January, 1941, for it was obvious by then that Roosevelt would horn into the war soon or late, and I knew by bitter experience in the last war that I'd be throttled at once. Since then I have thought out many likely articles, but not one of them has been printable. In these days, indeed, my very vocabulary is prohibited. I couldn't so much as mention Roosevelt or Churchill or any of the other frauds without having to face a savage official onslaught, with all blows directed below the belt. The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.”

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H.L. Mencken

April 1, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of Milton is that he functions as a Milton.”

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H.L. Mencken

Origine: 1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 3

“Though the theology of Christianity had thus sunk to the lowly estate of a mere delusion of the rabble, propagated on that level by the ancient caste of sacerdotal parasites, the ethics of Christianity continued to enjoy the utmost acceptance, and perhaps even more acceptance than ever before. It seemed to be generally felt, in fact, that they simply must be saved from the wreck—that the world would vanish into chaos if they went the way of the revelations supporting them. In this fear a great many judicious men joined, and so there arose what was, in essence, an absolutely new Christian cult—a cult, to wit, purged of all the supernaturalism superimposed upon the older cult by generations of theologians, and harking back to what was conceived to be the pure ethical doctrine of Jesus.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

“Immorality is the morality of those who are having a better time. You will never convince the average farmer's mare that the late Maud S. was not dreadfully immoral.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“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.”

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H.L. Mencken

As quoted in LIFE magazine, Vol. 21, No. 6, (5 August 1946), p. 48 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3UwEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&client=safari&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false
1940s–present

“Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.”

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H.L. Mencken libro The American Language

The American Language (1919)

“Wealth — Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“A man who has throttled a bad impulse has at least some consolation in his agonies, but a man who has throttled a good one is in a bad way indeed.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy, shared in this disgrace.”

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H.L. Mencken

October 24, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“The Sun editorial on Roosevelt this morning begins: "Franklin D. Roosevelt was a great man."… The argument, in brief, is that all his skullduggeries and imbecilities were wiped out when "he took an inert and profoundly isolationist people and brought them to support a necessary war on a scale never before imagined." In other words, his greatest fraud was his greatest glory, and his sufficient excuse for all his other frauds. It seems to me to be very likely that Roosevelt will take a high place in American popular history -- maybe even alongside Washington and Lincoln… He had every quality that morons esteem in their heros. It will be to the interest of all his heirs and assigns to whoop him up, and they will probably succeed in swamping his critics.”

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H.L. Mencken

April 13, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“The virulence of the national appetite for bogus revelation.”

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H.L. Mencken

Origine: 1910s, A Book of Prefaces (1917), Ch. 1

“There are people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.”

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H.L. Mencken

71
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.”

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H.L. Mencken libro The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1908/1913)
1900s

“Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent. Indeed, it would not be far wrong to describe the best as the common enemy of all decent citizens. But there will be small hope of gaining adherents to this idea so long as government is thought of as an independent and somehow super-human organism, with powers, rights, and privileges transcending those of any other human aggregation.”

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H.L. Mencken

68
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don’t forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.”

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H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun (12 June 1922)
1920s

“[Roosevelt] was always… finding new victims to loot and new followers to reward, flouting common sense, and boldly denying its existence, demonstrating by his anti-logic that two and two made five, promising larger and larger slices of the moon. His career will greatly engage historians, if any good ones ever appear in America, but it will be of even more interest to psychologists. He was the first American to penetrate to the real depths of vulgar stupidity. He never made the mistake of overestimating the intelligence of the American mob. He was its unparalleled professor.”

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H.L. Mencken

April 15, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“To a clergyman lying under a vow of chastity any act of sex is immoral, but his abhorrence of it naturally increases in proportion as it looks safe and is correspondingly tempting. As a prudent man, he is not much disturbed by incitations which carry their obvious and certain penalties; what shakes him is the enticement bare of any probable secular retribution. Ergo, the worst and damndest indulgence is that which goes unwhipped. So he teaches that it is no sin for a woman to bear a child to a drunken and worthless husband, even though she may believe with sound reason that it will be diseased and miserable all its life, but if she resorts to any mechanical or chemical device, however harmless, to prevent its birth, she is doomed by his penology to roast in Hell forever, along with the assassin of orphans and the scoundrel who forgets his Easter duty.”

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H.L. Mencken libro Treatise on the Gods

Treatise on the Gods (1930; 2nd Edition 1946)
1930s

“Do they believe that the aim of teaching English is to increase the exact and beautiful use of the language? Or that it is to inculcate and augment patriotism? Or that it is to diminish sorrow in the home? Or that it has some other end, cultural, economic, or military? … it was their verdict by a solemn referendum that the principal objective in teaching English was to make good spellers, and that after that came the breeding of good capitalizers. … I have maintained for years, sometimes perhaps with undue heat: that pedagogy in the United States is fast descending to the estate of a childish necromancy, and that the worst idiots, even among pedagogues, are the teachers of English. It is positively dreadful to think that the young of the American species are exposed day in and day out to the contamination of such dark minds. What can be expected of education that is carried on in the very sewers of the intellect? How can morons teach anything that is worth knowing?”

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H.L. Mencken

On "teachers of English" in "The Schoolmarm's Goal" in The Lower Depths (1925)
1920s

“The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.”

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H.L. Mencken

397
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

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