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The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him.

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
Time
Value
Spends
Simply
Recreation
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Leisure
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Benefit
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Conditionally
Really
Dog
Recreations
Men
Benefits
Puerile

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There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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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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I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.
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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.
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If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
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I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
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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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Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.
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A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
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The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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