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When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.

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
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Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
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Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Good
However
Shall
Forever
Conceivably
Dies
Vanish
Show
Nothingness
Desire
Immortality
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Believe
Content

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

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Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States--first,murder stories secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.
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War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.
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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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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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Nature abhors a moron.
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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
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The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.
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Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
H. L. Mencken
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Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above them. They are always in favor of despots who promise to feed them. The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
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A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
H. L. Mencken
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Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
H. L. Mencken
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No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
H. L. Mencken
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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
H. L. Mencken
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Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.
H. L. Mencken
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I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.
H. L. Mencken
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I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
H. L. Mencken
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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
H. L. Mencken
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There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.
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The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
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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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