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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
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
Lying
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Legend
Attained
Legends
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Literature
Age
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.
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A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
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On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
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The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.
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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.
H. L. Mencken
Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
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Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.
H. L. Mencken
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor
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Nature abhors a moron.
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I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.
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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.
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Los Angeles: nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis.
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Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.
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The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation.
H. L. Mencken
Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
H. L. Mencken
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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The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
H. L. Mencken
A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
H. L. Mencken
