H.L. Mencken: Great Artists Are Never Puritans

Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) was an American writer and scholar known during his lifetime as “the Sage of Baltimore.” His most famous work was The American Language, an investigation and analysis of the ways English is spoken in the United States. He is also widely remembered for his reporting on the Scopes “Monkey” Trial. Mencken also contributed to the fields of journalism, satire, and social criticism, and his works were an influence for the development of the American Left and Libertarian movements. He died in 1956 at the age of 75

“The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man — that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense — has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.”

Source: Prejudices, First Series (1919)