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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.

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
Book
Men
Whisky
Whiskey
Drunk
Constantly
Books

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There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
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A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
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Youth, though it may lack knowledge, is certainly not devoid of intelligence it sees through shams with sharp and terrible eyes.
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Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
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One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
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A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.
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In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
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The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull
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The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
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The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.
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Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.
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The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
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Lying is not only excusable it is not only innocent it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it offers, life would become a mere syllogism and hence too metallic to be borne.
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