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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.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
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Literary Critic
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Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Art
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Man is always looking for someone to boast to woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.
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The worshiper is the father of the gods.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
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I'm ombibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all.
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For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together.
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The average woman must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain disdain he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot help feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is their father.
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Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.
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The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.
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The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.
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A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks a woman loses hers after four kisses.
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The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
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Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.
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Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
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It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready made.
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To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse
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We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
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It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.
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No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
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The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
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