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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.

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
Book
Men
Chief
Chiefs
Worth
Books
Reading
Knowledge
Funny

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American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
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To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
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The best years are the forties after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.
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The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.
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Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull
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It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth-and youth is the time of real tragedy-that the young are thrown mainly with adults they do not quite respect.
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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
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In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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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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The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.
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Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.
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Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
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Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of 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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What we need in this country is a general improvement in eating. We have the best raw materials in the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but most of them are ruined in the process of preparing them for the table.
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There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.
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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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