A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.

Mencken’s aphorism skewers a common reflex of wounded pride: when a man is deceived in love (or believes he has been), he externalizes blame onto the woman rather than confronting his own credulity, vanity, or desire. The comparison to walking into a door in the dark sharpens the point—an inanimate object becomes the target of anger simply because it is the immediate occasion of pain. The joke exposes how irrational blame can be when it serves emotional self-protection. More broadly, it fits Mencken’s satirical view of human beings as adept at rationalizing their mistakes and eager to turn embarrassment into moral accusation against others.