"The essence of a sound style is..." - Quote by H L Mencken

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”

“Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.”

“We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as something going on in a small minority, perpetually beleaguered in a few walled towns. Now and then the horde of barbarians outside breaks through, and we have an armed effort to halt the process. That is, we have a Reformation, a French Revolution, a war for democracy, a Great Awakening. The minority is decimated and driven to cover. But a few survive- and a few are enough to carry on.”

“Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words.”

“The grand style follows suit with all great passion. It disdains to please, it forgets to persuade. It commands. It wills.”

“What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.”

“I find in my own writing that only fiction - and rarely, a poem - fully tests me to the kind of limits of what I know and what I feel.”

“Poets and writers who are in love with the superlative all want to do more than they can.”

“Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.”