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It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.

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
Environment
Almost
Society
Placed
Artist
Hath
Art
Assume
Country
Assuming
Dignity
Safe

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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.
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Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may be that we are all actually freezing hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent.
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When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
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The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.
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If there were only three women left in the world, two of them would immediately convene a court-martial to try the other one.
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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
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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.
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I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.
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Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another Rosenkavailer.
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The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.
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Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
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The instant I reach Heaven, I'm going to speak to God very sharply.
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The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
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The average man gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him.
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What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor
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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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The federal [bank deposit] insurance scheme has worked up to now simply and solely because there have been very few bank failures. The next time we have a pestilence of them it will come to grief quickly enough, and if the good banks escape ruin with the bad ones it will be only because the taxpayer foots the bill.
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The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy, shared in this disgrace.
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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
H. L. Mencken