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Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
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Historian
Journalist
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Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
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More quotes by H. L. Mencken

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Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
H. L. Mencken
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Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. Mencken
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If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H. L. Mencken
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Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
H. L. Mencken
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Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. Mencken
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Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.
H. L. Mencken
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The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
H. L. Mencken
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Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
H. L. Mencken
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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
H. L. Mencken
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The first kiss is stolen by the man the last is begged by the woman.
H. L. Mencken
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It is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more nearly his own mind pulsates with the great ebbs and flows of popular delusion and emotion, the more admirably he performs his function. He may be an ass, but that is surely no demerit in a man paid to make asses of his customers.
H. L. Mencken
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
H. L. Mencken
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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
H. L. Mencken
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The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it.
H. L. Mencken
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Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
H. L. Mencken
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
H. L. Mencken
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At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
H. L. Mencken
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In Baltimore, soft crabs are always fried (or broiled) in the altogether, with maybe a small jock-strap of bacon added.
H. L. Mencken
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I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
H. L. Mencken
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In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
H. L. Mencken