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To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.

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
Men
Saying
Accident
Word
Sudden
Happiness
Puts
Happy
Accidents
Delicacies
Perfect
Discovery
Searches
Writing
Ears
Painfully
Thing
Constant
Delicacy
Way
Joy
Verbal

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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
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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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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
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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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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth-and youth is the time of real tragedy-that the young are thrown mainly with adults they do not quite respect.
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It is almost impossible for an Anglo-Saxon to write of sex without being dirty.
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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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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Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.
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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
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Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that it is not conscious of it for the duration of that moment it is happy. Thus a hog is always happier than a man, and a bacillus is happier than a hog
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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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Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
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