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I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.

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
Giving
Harvard
Every
Chicago
Paris
London
Cities
Buttermilk
Alive
Snout
American
Tail
Give
Tails

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Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.
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It is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more nearly his own mind pulsates with the great ebbs and flows of popular delusion and emotion, the more admirably he performs his function. He may be an ass, but that is surely no demerit in a man paid to make asses of his customers.
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Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.
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The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules.
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In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.
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Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.
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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
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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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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.
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A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.
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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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Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.
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Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
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If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.
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It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
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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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There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.]
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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