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What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.

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
Forgotten
Danger
Full
Botched
Dies
Intends
Process
Benign
Often
Interference
Nature
Dangers
Every
Obviously

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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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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.
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My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
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Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
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The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules.
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I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.
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The first kiss is stolen by the man the last is begged by the woman.
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Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.
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The instant I reach Heaven, I'm going to speak to God very sharply.
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Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.
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Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
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The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.
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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
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I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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I am a strict monogamist: it is twenty years since I last went to bed with two women at once, and then I was in my cups and not myself.
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Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant.
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