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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

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
May
Punishment
Prison
Killing
Morality
Restrains
Humor
Scruple
Moral
Scruples
Fear
Partly
Sense
Described

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Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
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It is only doubt that creates.
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Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.
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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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...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night.
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The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
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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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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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Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.
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Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.
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Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
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The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.
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The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
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Unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency should be quietly hanged as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.
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The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
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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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