The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol. It is there that the worst crimes are committed; it is there that lawbreaking attains to the estate and dignity of a learned profession; it is there that contempt for the laws is engendered, fostered, and spread broadcast.
H. L. MenckenNo man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
H. L. MenckenThe extortions and oppressions of government will go on so long as such bare fraudulence deceives and disarms the victims; so long as they are ready to swallow the immemorial official theory that protesting against the stealings of the archbishop's secretary's nephew's mistress' illegitimate son is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
H. L. MenckenThe Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style; he is even capable of something approaching a purely aesthetic emotion. But he fears this aesthetic emotion as an insinuating distraction from his chief business in life: the sober consideration of the all-important problem of conduct. Art is a temptation, a seduction, a Lorelei, and the Good Man may safely have traffic with it when it is broken to moral uses--in other words, when its innocence is pumped out of it, and it is purged of gusto.
H. L. Mencken