"I devoured hot-dogs in Baltimore 'way back..." - Quote by H L Mencken
I devoured hot-dogs in Baltimore 'way back in 1886, and they were then very far from newfangled...They contained precisely the same rubber, indigestible pseudo-sausages that millions of Americans now eat, and they leaked the same flabby, puerile mustard. Their single point of difference lay in the fact that their covers were honest German Wecke made of wheat-flour baked to crispiness, and not the soggy rolls prevailing today, of ground acorns, plaster-of-Paris, flecks of bath-sponge, and atmospheric air all compact.
More by H L Mencken
“A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.”
“Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.”
“Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.”
More on Food
“I was on a bus once, it was in the middle of the night, and I had a box of crackers and a can of Easy Cheese. It was dark, and it was a surprise how much cheese I had applied on each cracker. That's why they should have a glow-in-the-dark version of Easy Cheese. It's not like the product has any integrity to begin with. If you buy a room-temperature cheese that you squeeze out of a can, you probably won't get mad because it glows in the dark too.”
“Those places I don't understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora.”
“Is a vegetarian permitted to eat animal crackers?”
More on American Culture
“The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow,-one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness.”
“If honesty were suddenly introduced into American life, the whole system would collapse.”
“I worry about my judgment when anything I believe in or do regularly begins to be accepted by the American public.”