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Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.

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
Annoying
Saving
Whenever
Injures
Scoundrel
Annoys
Scoundrels
Pretense
Improving

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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
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Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.
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People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?
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