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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas

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
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Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Longer
Thirteenth
Century
Profess
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If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man.
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The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
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The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
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A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.
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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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Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
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Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
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For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together.
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Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
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Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.
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A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
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One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
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When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
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War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.
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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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To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
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A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.
H. L. Mencken