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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.

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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Historian
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Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
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Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Humor
Justice
Messianic
Passion
Withers
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Patriotic
Truth
Delusion
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The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
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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 great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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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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Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that it is not conscious of it for the duration of that moment it is happy. Thus a hog is always happier than a man, and a bacillus is happier than a hog
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The average man gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him.
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A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
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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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No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
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Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
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Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
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The late William Jennings Bryan, L.L.D., always had one great advantage in controversy he was never burdened with an understanding of his opponent's case.
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.
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In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
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The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.
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Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
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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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Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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