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One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.

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
Life
Notion
Friendship
Eternal
Events
Discreditable
Term
Delusions
Human
Delusion
Humans
Puts
Long
Somehow

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Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
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New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
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Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
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Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
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If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense.
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If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.
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Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place
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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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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
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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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Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
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Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels two-thirds, more or less, idiots and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.
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When a woman says she won't, it's a good sign that she will. And when she says she will, it is an even better sign.
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When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
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How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
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The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.
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The common man knows exactly what he wants...and deserves to get it good and hard.
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