Quote #36

There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of Milton is that he functions as a Milton.

More from H. L. Mencken

  1. To be in love is merely to be in a state of perpetual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young wo…
  2. Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.
  3. The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C…
  4. Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
  5. All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is …
  6. The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
  7. The public...demands certainties...But there are no certainties.
  8. Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

All H. L. Mencken quotes