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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

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
Aspirant
Disgraceful
Saddest
Failure
Democracy
Success
Political
Life
Ignominious

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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
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The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.
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The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
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A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.
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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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Debussy--A pretty girl with one blue eye and one brown one.
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The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.
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Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
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I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
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The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
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