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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
Whisky
Whiskey
Drunk
Constantly
Books
Book
Men

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The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
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Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
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It is not the drinker, but the man who has just stopped drinking, who thinks the world is going to the dogs.
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The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.
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Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another Rosenkavailer.
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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
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Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.
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Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.
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They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.
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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
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The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
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Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.
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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.
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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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To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue teaches.
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