H. L. Mencken Quotes

I much preferred Latin to Greek. I loved the language being such a pattern that you could not shift a word without the whole sentence falling to pieces.

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Grammar is the analysis of language.

I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. You can see for yourself how many different ways they might be arranged.

You could teach [George] Carlin in college. It's the construction of the word and the order of things and how they go. How all those sentences are timed perfectly.

Grammar is the grave of letters.

We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may be most readily put together.

For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next.

I remember nothing about it except a philological fact. My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not say 'a green great dragon', but had to say 'a great green dragon'. I wondered why, and still do. The fact that I remember this is possibly significant, as I do not think I ever tried to write a story again for many years, and was taken up with language.

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

The words of the world want to make sentences.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries.

Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.

I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page.

Grammar, which knows how to control even kings.

The thing that's depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they've never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference between 'lie' and 'lay,' let alone 'its' and 'it's.' And they're in graduate school!

I have been fighting over commas all my life.

The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive.

I know what the structure of the language is.

I'm pretty sure when I need a comma; I'm not so sure about a semicolon.

You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn't have connectives like 'and' that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.

When we put words together - adjective with noun, noun with verb, verb with object - we start to talk to each other.

I am trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one period.

For first you write a sentence, And then you chop it small; Then mix the bits and sort them out Just as they chance to fall: The order of the phrases makes no difference at all.