"To denounce moralizing out of hand is..." - Quote by H L Mencken
To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
More by H L Mencken
“When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.”
“Government, like any other organism, refuses to acquiesce in its own extinction. This refusal, of course, involves the resistance to any effort to diminish its powers and prerogatives.”
“Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.”
More on Morality
“Everyone has his own conscience,and there should be no rules abouthow a conscience should function.”
“Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other.”
“Morality is not respectability.”
More on Judgment
“When you see anyone complaining of such and such a person's ill-nature and bad temper, know that the complainant is bad-tempered, forasmuch as he speaks ill of that bad-tempered person, because he alone is good-tempered who is quietly forbearing towards the bad-tempered and ill-natured.”
“I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are.”
“People have only two or three adjectives to describe people in the public eye. And that's okay. As long as those adjectives aren't train wreck, mess, terrible.”