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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.

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
Wells
Reputation
Human
Possession
Humans
Valuable
Well
Air
Life
Success
Disdainful
Funny
Possessions
Next
Superior
Money
Superiors

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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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The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
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The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.
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There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.
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When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.
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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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Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.
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[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.
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There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
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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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The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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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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Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
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There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.
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Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
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The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
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The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
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We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
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