A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
Interpretation
Men often shift blame onto women when they are deceived, similar to how they blame objects like doors in the dark.
This quote reflects the tendency of individuals, particularly men, to externalize responsibility for their misfortunes or mistakes. H. L. Mencken draws a parallel between blaming a woman for being fooled and blaming a door in the dark for causing an accident, suggesting that it is easier for individuals to point the finger at others rather than reflect on their own actions or decisions that led to the situation.
In practice
In a discussion about accountability in relationships, I could use this quote to illustrate how people often deflect blame.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
Death ends a life, not a relationship.
For me, living means I can be responsive to the other person. It means I can show my emotions and my feelings. Talk to them. Feel with them.
It's never a good idea to organize society in a way that depletes the energy of half the population. We discovered this with women decades ago, and now it's time to realize it with introverts.
Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.
I can see myself watching him shave every morning. And at other time I see us in that house and see how one bright day (or a day like this, so cold your mind shifts every time the wind does) he will wake up and decide it's all wrong. I'm sorry, he'll say. I have to leave now.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.