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No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.

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
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Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Heart
Secret
Stores
Would
State
Images
Men
Two
Content
Dream
Destiny
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Discontent
Live
Existence
Candy
Children
Child
Store

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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.
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What is the professor's function? To pass on to numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and largely untrue.
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The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
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Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake
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People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.
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When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
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I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
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The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man - say a Tennessee Holy Roller - is really very small.
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The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
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Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
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Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
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No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
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...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
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Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.
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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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One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them.
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The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.
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Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
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