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Taxation, for example, is eternally lively it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories

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
Made
Golf
Eternally
Drama
Lively
Concern
Taxation
Mellowed
Theory
Theories
Tenths
Example
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Gaudy
Either
Directly
Smallpox
Many
Gay
Preposterous
Much
Nine
Moreover

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Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.
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As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain.
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A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.
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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.
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Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against the other half, and thus dispose of both.
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Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.
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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
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Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later for another thing, they die earlier.
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Only a jackass ever talks over his affairs with a woman, whether she be his sweetheart, wife, or sister, or mother.
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When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.
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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
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Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
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Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful next time.
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The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.
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Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.
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Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
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