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The best years are the forties after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.

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
Best
Years
Deteriorate
Men
Forties
Villainy
Maximum
Forty
Fifty
Begins

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The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.
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Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
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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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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.
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The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.
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As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain.
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War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
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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.
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