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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

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
Spiritual
Basic
War
Endless
Facts
Tragedy
Human
Standing
Humans
Line
Much
Lines
Life
Existence
Bore
Fact
Bores

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Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us.
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I am a strict monogamist: it is twenty years since I last went to bed with two women at once, and then I was in my cups and not myself.
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The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.
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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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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
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Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.
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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
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The average man gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him.
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Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
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If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
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The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all men are just as easy to fool.
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When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
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If there were only three women left in the world, two of them would immediately convene a court-martial to try the other one.
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The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
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In Baltimore, soft crabs are always fried (or broiled) in the altogether, with maybe a small jock-strap of bacon added.
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