H. L. Mencken was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on Sept. 12, 1880, and worked for the Baltimore Morning Herald and Baltimore Sun newspapers.

As a keen-eyed, tough-talking and sharp-witted reporter, editor, and author, Mencken is one of my journalism and writing heroes.

Here are a few notable Mencken quotes:

"Nature abhors a moron"

"Life is a dead-end street."

"When women kiss it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands."

"A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier."

"In my day a reporter who took an assignment was wholly on his own until he got back to the office, and even then he was little molested until his copy was turned in at the desk; today he tends to become only a homunculus at the end of a telephone wire, and the reduction of his observations to prose is commonly farmed out to literary castrati who never leave the office, and hence never feel the wind of the world in their faces or see anything with their own eyes."

"Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian."

"Whenever a husband and a wife begin to discuss their marriage
they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest."

"The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating."

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

"Unitarianism, a movement typical of the modern effort to get rid of Hell, it is not a kind of Christianity at all, but simply a mattress for skeptical ex-Christians to fall on."

"It costs more to maintain ten vices than one virtue."

"Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it."

"Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body."

"Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking."

"Creator—A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh."

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Toledo, Ohio
Sept. 8, 2008