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How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
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
Life
Laugh
Pebble
Laughing
Cockroaches
Takes
Spaghetti
Suffering
Pebbles
Woman
Shoe
Littles
Unbearable
Little
Shoes
Make
Laughter
Cockroach
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
H. L. Mencken
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.
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The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
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Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.
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I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
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I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man.
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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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I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
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Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.
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Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
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Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
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Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.
H. L. Mencken
The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.
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The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
H. L. Mencken
I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
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Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.
H. L. Mencken
