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A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

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
Conscience
Parents
Parent
Religion
Evil
Penance
Family
Sunday
School
Spirituality
Children
Prison

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There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.
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Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
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Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
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Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
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The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
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I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.
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When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.
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Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.
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The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties
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The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.
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American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
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...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night.
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