H. L. Mencken Quotes

I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it.

If you want something, have it. If you feel like it's forbidden, you'll want it even more. Whenever I have a craving, I go and have it and just make sure I don't have it again the next day.

I have to think of moderation, which is not a word that's in my vocabulary. But I try.

The hardest thing is to take less when you can get more.

If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please.

We say no to lots of things that would please us. I would like to punch people every now and then, but I don't. I would like to have something for free rather than pay for it. I would like to skip to the front of the line... I don't mean to brush aside the taste of meat, which is a powerful attraction. But its power is not without limit.

Everything in moderation - that's what I live by.

I'll eat one cookie, not a whole box of cookies. But I'll still eat the one cookie... sometimes two, or even three. But not the whole box.

As regards the use of wine, remember that we drink to quench thirst, and that the limit of moderation is reached when the edge of the intellect is dulled. A boy should be brought up to avoid wine…. Your own countrymen, like all northern peoples, are, I know, sore offenders in this matter of eating and drinking. But I count upon your own innate self-respect to preserve you from such bad example, and to enable you to despise the sneers and complaints of those around you.

'Tis not the eating, nor 'tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess.

We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.

Two drinks a day. Two drinks a day. TWO DRINKS A DAY! It doesn't work! Not when you want eleven, and not when you start shopping for wine glasses in the vase department at Bloomingdales.

Excess in moderation: don't drink a few beers every day after work, wait 'till the end of the month and drink all the beers at once.

Learning when 'enough is enough' is the discipline of a lifetime.

Sir, I have no objection to a man's drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.

Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.

I had to give up martinis - I enjoyed them too much.

I adore clothes, I adore drinking. I just don't have the time or the inclination to totally indulge in it.

This I consider to be a valuable principle in life: Do no thing in excess.

The point of drinking in moderation is that sometimes you don't drink in moderation.

Always rise from the table with an appetite, and you will never sit down without one.

I hold this as a rule of life: too much of anything is bad.

Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.