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The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.

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
Hold
Cape
Dangerous
Capes
Women
Enormously
Men
Sailor
Hence
Precisely
Holds
Fascinating
Sailors

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What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor
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If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
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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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It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready made.
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The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful next time.
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A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.
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The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?
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The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
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I am a strict monogamist: it is twenty years since I last went to bed with two women at once, and then I was in my cups and not myself.
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The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
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The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.
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History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
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Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
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