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"

  • Last Week with H. L. Mencken

    See how writers were quoting Mencken last week and which quotations they used. January 8 – from a book review about war in Afghanistan: “I think you could put 100 war memoirs on a shelf and they would not contain as many references to Western intellectuals as Rubin’s 290-page book, which mentions Herbert Marcuse, Susan…

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  • Mencken Day Panel Video (6 of 6) (September 9, 2022)

    This panel co-sponsored by The Mencken Society (TMS) and the Mencken House (MH) took place the day before Mencken Day 2022 (Sept. 10). The discussion explores the dimensions of Mencken’s views, their conventional labeling as conservative, and how they might relate to contemporary political stances. The panel included Darryl Hart, president of TMS and author…

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  • More Information on “Mencken as Conservative or Liberal”

    (zoom information below) H. L. Mencken: A Conservative for Our Times? H. L. Mencken is famous for his pungent and still quoted views on politics and politicians. This panel co-sponsored by The Mencken Society (TMS) and the Mencken House (MH) explores the dimensions of Mencken’s views, theirconventional labeling as conservative, and how they might relate…

  • Mencken as Conservative or Liberal?

    H. L. Mencken: A Conservative for Our Times? H. L. Mencken is famous for his pungent and still quoted views on politics and politicians. This panel co-sponsored by The Mencken Society (TMS) and the Mencken House (MH) explores the dimensions of Mencken’s views, theirconventional labeling as conservative, and how they might relate to contemporary political…

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  • Mencken Day 2022

    Saturday, September 10, 2022 Wheeler Auditorium, Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral St 10:30 AM: Mencken Society Business meeting. Speakerswill be Chuck Chalberg, aka H. L. Mencken and G. K.Chesterton, and John Barr talking about his book on Mencken and death. 2:00 PM: The Mencken Day annual lecture will be delivered by Dr Stacy Spaulding…

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