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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
Every
Chicago
Paris
London
Cities
Buttermilk
Alive
Snout
American
Tail
Give
Tails
Giving
Harvard
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
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In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain.
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To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
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The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.
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Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.
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The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
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The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries - as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them - but because it was far more poetical.
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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.
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We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
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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.
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Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
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When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.
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The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.
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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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A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
H. L. Mencken