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Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

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
Work
Movable
Irresistible
Temptation
Force
Body

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Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.
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The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have.
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There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
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We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
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The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
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It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
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School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.
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It is almost impossible for an Anglo-Saxon to write of sex without being dirty.
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Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.
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Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States--first,murder stories secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.
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Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
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The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.
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The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.
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Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.
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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
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Nature abhors a moron.
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Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
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The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.
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The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.
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