The Mencken Society

Promoting the living works of Henry Louis Mencken, the "Sage of Baltimore"

  • A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.
  • Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
  • Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
  • Every man is his own hell.
  • Historian – An unsuccessful novelist.
  • Misogynist – A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
  • Optimist – The sort of man who marries his sister’s best friend.
  • Puritanism – The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. 
  • The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
  • The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each armed with a fly-swatter.
  • The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity.  It ended, again like the Salvation Army began, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
  • Wealth – Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.

Promoting the living works of Henry Louis Mencken, the "Sage of Baltimore"

  • Charles Fecher to be Honored 2012-10-20

    “The Baltimore City Historical Society is honoring the late Charles Fecher at its annual  Mayor’s Reception on October 20, 2012 at Mount Calvary Church, 816 N. Eutaw Street [cor Madison Ave.], from 12 to 2:30 p.m., tickets are $20.00 and may be purchased at the door. Fecher was a distinguished Mencken scholar and editor of the Mencken diaries. For…

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  • Updates to Richard Schrader’s H. L. Mencken: A Descriptive Bibliography

    Dr Schrader maintains a list of Additions And Corrections To H. L. Mencken: A Descriptive Bibliography. The latest revision will always be found at: https://www2.bc.edu/richard-schrader/mencken.pdf The latest revision as of the date of this posting is dated April, 2011.

  • Mencken Collection For Sale

    Dr F Norman Vickers of the Pensacola Mencken Group and Volunteer Executive Director of the Jazz Society of Pensacola has a collection of books by and about Mr Mencken for sale. The list of titles is here. Interested parties may email info@mencken.org.

  • H L Mencken Stamp

    This stamp is not official US Postal issue, but it ought to be. Produced by Society member Otto David Sherman, these stamps won’t pay for your mail to be delivered, but they will allow you to declare to the world your Menckenophilia. We can’t claim that these stamps will appreciate in value as have the “Inverted Jenny” or…

  • Mencken Society T-Shirts

    The Mencken Society is happy to offer its members official Mencken Society T-shirts. These shirts will be for sale at the Mencken Day Celebration, September 8, 2012, at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. The front of the shirt shows the Society’s logo and the back a quote particularly apt during Presidential Campaign season: “No one…

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