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Who really said it

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy

Written by H. L. Mencken 1880–1956 · Baltimore journalist; co-founder and editor of The American Mercury
Verified Free to reuse

Genuine, and traceable to the page. It first appeared in the “Clinical Notes” department of The American Mercury for January 1925, where the scanned issue ↗ reads, verbatim, “Puritanism.—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” The department carried a joint Mencken–Nathan byline and its entries are unsigned, but Mencken reprinted the line under his own name in A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949), which is why Quote Investigator ↗ gives him sole credit.

Last verified 10 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” H. L. Mencken, “Clinical Notes,” The American Mercury 4, no. 13 (January 1925): 59.

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Provenance

Where it actually appears

Work
The American Mercury, Vol. 4, No. 13
Department
“Clinical Notes,” by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan — p. 59
Published
January 1925 · New York: Alfred A. Knopf
Reprinted
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949), chap. 30, “Sententiae”

Analysis of Patriotism.—What, precisely, is it that makes a man love his native land? … A man is generally patriotic for much the same reason that he always wears the same kind of collar.

Puritanism.—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. abridged

The famous line is the whole entry — one sentence in an unbroken run of unsigned definitions. It follows a long paragraph on patriotism and is followed immediately by one headed “My Dear Friends.” Transcribed from the scanned issue at the Internet Archive; the ellipsis marks an omitted passage in the patriotism entry.

Scanned magazine issue
The American Mercury, January 1925, at the Internet Archive
Read the January 1925 American Mercury scan

How we checked

  • The line is in the scan. The January 1925 American Mercury (Vol. 4, No. 13) is freely readable at the Internet Archive ↗. In the “Clinical Notes” department the entry reads, verbatim, “Puritanism.—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
  • The department is jointly bylined; the reprint breaks the tie. The heading on the scan reads “CLINICAL NOTES / BY H. L. MENCKEN AND GEORGE JEAN NATHAN,” with unsigned entries beneath. Quote Investigator ↗ concludes that the 1925 and 1949 citations together give Mencken the credit, and locates the reprint in A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949) at chapter 30, “Sententiae,” section “Arcana Coelestia,” page 624.
  • The usual citation is wrong. Reference books have long pointed to A Book of Burlesques (1920); the full text at Project Gutenberg ↗ has no “Sententiae” section and contains neither “Puritan” nor “haunting” anywhere — matching the result QI reached using scans of the 1928 third printing.
  • Wikiquote agrees. Its Puritanism page ↗ carries the line sourced to Mencken, The American Mercury, January 1925, Vol. 4, No. 13, “Clinical Notes,” page 59.
Public domain

The line was first published in the January 1925 American Mercury, and works published in the United States in 1925 are in the public domain — which is why the Internet Archive serves the entire issue without restriction. One caveat: A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949), where Mencken reprinted the line, is a separate and still-copyrighted compilation. The public-domain text is the 1925 magazine wording quoted here.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The name is right. The footnote usually isn't.

This is the rare famous quotation where the celebrity attribution holds up and the citation attached to it does not. For decades the line has been credited to Mencken and sourced to a book that does not contain it.

A Book of Burlesques (1920) Miscited

The most persistent error, and it came from reference works: Quote Investigator records that the 1991 Bloomsbury Dictionary of Quotations (ed. John Daintith et al.) and the 1993 Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (ed. Robert Andrews) both pointed to this book, sometimes to a “Sententiae” section in it. QI obtained scans of the 1928 third printing and could find neither the quotation nor any such section. The full 1920 text at Project Gutenberg ↗ confirms it independently: the words “Puritan” and “haunting” do not occur in the book at all. The book does contain a chapter of satirical dictionary definitions, “The Jazz Webster,” which is a plausible reason a definition-shaped Mencken epigram got filed there.

“Puritanism: the haunting fear…” / “Puritanism is the haunting fear…” Reworded

Mencken wrote a lexicon entry, so the original is “Puritanism.—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Modern versions swap in a colon or graft on the verb “is.” The recast is old rather than modern: Quote Investigator notes Ralph Barton Perry writing in 1926 that puritanism is “the haunting fear that some one, somewhere, may be happy.” The sense is unchanged, but the words in quotation marks are not quite the printed ones.

“…may be having a good time” / “the gnawing worry…” Variant

Two circulating rewrites, both documented by Quote Investigator ↗: a 1946 Beverly Gray column in The Calgary Herald printed “may be having a good time,” and John H. Schaar in 1970 wrote “the gnawing worry that someone somewhere might be happy.” Neither is Mencken’s wording.

George Jean Nathan Ambiguity in the source

Worth stating plainly rather than glossing over: the 1925 printing cannot settle authorship by itself. The department heading in the scan reads “CLINICAL NOTES / BY H. L. MENCKEN AND GEORGE JEAN NATHAN,” and the individual entries beneath it are unsigned. What resolves it is Mencken’s own later republication of the line under his sole name, and on that combined basis Quote Investigator ↗ concludes Mencken deserves the credit. QI does not record anyone crediting the remark to Nathan.

So: the attribution is sound and the sentence is genuine — it is the footnote that circulates wrongly. Cite “Clinical Notes,” The American Mercury, January 1925 ↗, not A Book of Burlesques.

Context

A dictionary entry, not an aphorism

The line reads like a stray witticism, but it was written as a lexicon entry. Each month The American Mercury ran a department called “Clinical Notes” — a column of short unsigned paragraphs, each headed by a word and a dash, in which Mencken and George Jean Nathan defined whatever was irritating them. In the January 1925 number the run moves from Companionship to Conscience to a long Analysis of Patriotism that ends with a man being patriotic for the same reason he always wears the same kind of collar — and then, with no set-up and no follow-through, one sentence on Puritanism before the column moves on.

That compression is the whole trick, and it is why the line outlived the argument it belonged to. Mencken had been making the same case at length for years: A Book of Prefaces (1917) gives Puritanism an entire chapter, and the preface he dated 1 February 1920 to A Book of Burlesques is already grumbling about an America polluted by Prohibition. What 1925 added was brevity. The definition does not argue with Puritanism; it diagnoses it, and then walks away.

The original has a dash where the internet puts a colon — because Mencken was writing a dictionary, not a maxim.

Why the wording keeps drifting

Because the entry is a definition rather than a sentence, everyone who repeats it has to bolt on a verb — and the seams show. Quote Investigator traces a recast as early as 1926, when Ralph Barton Perry wrote that puritanism is “the haunting fear that some one, somewhere, may be happy,” splitting someone into two words. A 1929 letter in The Pittsburgh Press dropped the attribution entirely and generalised it: “They are obsessed by the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.”

The verb itself proved unstable. A 1946 Beverly Gray column in The Calgary Herald printed “may be having a good time”; John H. Schaar in 1970 had “the gnawing worry that someone somewhere might be happy.” The Saturday Review in 1963 got it right, dash and all. In 2020 John Cleese told The Telegraph a descendant of the joke aimed at Scottish Presbyterians — people with a nasty, sneaking feeling that someone, somewhere, is having a good time.

None of these are the sentence Mencken published. The 1925 text is eleven words after the headword, with a period and an em dash doing the work a colon does today.

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Happiness Freedom Character

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Quote Origin: Puritanism Is the Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Happyquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation. Establishes the January 1925 American Mercury as the earliest citation, documents the 1949 Chrestomathy reprint that settles authorship on Mencken, and catalogues the variants and the two dictionaries that cited the wrong book.
The American Mercury, January 1925 (Vol. 4, No. 13)archive.org

The primary source, scanned and freely readable. The line sits in the “Clinical Notes” department, which is bylined “BY H. L. MENCKEN AND GEORGE JEAN NATHAN.”
A Book of Burlesques (1920), full textgutenberg.org

The book most often cited as the source — wrongly. Search it yourself: there is no “Sententiae” section and no occurrence of “Puritan” or “haunting” anywhere in it.
Wikiquote: Puritanismen.wikiquote.org

Carries the quotation with the same sourcing — Mencken, The American Mercury, January 1925, Vol. 4 No. 13, “Clinical Notes,” page 59.
A Book of Prefaces (1917), incl. “Puritanism as a Literary Force”gutenberg.org

Mencken’s long-form attack on the same target, eight years earlier. Chapter IV, page 197. It does not contain the epigram — it is the argument the epigram compresses.
H. L. Menckenen.wikipedia.org

Biography: born 12 September 1880 in Baltimore, died 29 January 1956; founded The American Mercury with George Jean Nathan in 1924, published by Alfred A. Knopf.

The author

About H. L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken

1880–1956 · Baltimore journalist, satirist & scholar of American English

H. L. Mencken was a Baltimore journalist, essayist and scholar of American English, and the most quotable critic of what he took to be a timid, moralising middle America. In 1924 he and the drama critic George Jean Nathan founded and edited The American Mercury, published by Alfred A. Knopf — the magazine whose “Clinical Notes” department carried this definition. Puritanism was a standing target rather than a passing joke: he had already given it a full chapter, “Puritanism as a Literary Force,” in A Book of Prefaces (1917).

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Mencken, H. L., and George Jean Nathan. “Clinical Notes.” The American Mercury 4, no. 13 (January 1925): 59. Reprinted in H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), chap. 30, “Sententiae,” 624.

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