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Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

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
Novelist
Historian
Novelists
Historical
History
Unsuccessful

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Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.
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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.
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Man weeps to think that he will die so soon woman, that she was born so long ago.
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The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
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I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.
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Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
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When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.
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The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
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Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
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After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.
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Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
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Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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