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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Love
Taste
Arms
Pleasure
Talking
Simple
Women
Children
Tastes
Men
Conversation

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Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.
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I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
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The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?
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Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
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When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.
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Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.
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The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
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If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.
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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
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The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance he offers absolution.
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Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.
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I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.
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