H.L. Mencken

For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. . . . Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't, they'd be married too.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Self-repect -The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a moveable body.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

Life is a dead-end street.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.