The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?
H. L. MenckenIt is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
H. L. MenckenMan is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said is that its cosmetic effect is good.
H. L. MenckenThey have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.
H. L. MenckenHere is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known kinds of contemporary fiction. It habitually exhibits, not a man of delicate organization in revolt against the inexplicable tragedy of existence, but a man of low sensibilities and elemental desires yielding himself gladly to his environment, and so achieving what, under a third-rate civilization, passes for success. To get on: this is the aim. To weigh and reflect, to doubt and rebel: this is the thing to be avoided.
H. L. Mencken