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The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.

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
Soaring
Form
Creature
Lacks
Give
Objectives
Women
Creatures
Manly
Giving
Necessary
Soar
Men
Dreams
Wholly
Secret
Cynical
Woman
Objective
Womanly
Dream
Wit

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A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.
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War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
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Man is always looking for someone to boast to woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
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They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.
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Los Angeles: nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis.
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Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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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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A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.
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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
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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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The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.
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I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.
H. L. Mencken
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The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
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I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.
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The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.
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A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
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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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