All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.
H. L. MenckenIt is difficult to believe that even idiots ever succumbed to such transparent contradictions, to such gaudy processions of mere counter-words, to so vast and obvious a nonsensicalitysentence after sentence that has no apparent meaning at all--stuff quite as bad as the worst bosh of Warren Gamaliel Harding.
H. L. MenckenThe demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. MenckenWriting books is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy.
H. L. MenckenHuman life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them. A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.
H. L. Mencken