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Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.

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
Develop
Lovers
Room
Rooms
Dark
Negatives
Absence

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The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
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The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
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I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.
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The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.
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Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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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 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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If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.
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One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
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The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
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The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
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Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
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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 late William Jennings Bryan, L.L.D., always had one great advantage in controversy he was never burdened with an understanding of his opponent's case.
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If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.
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If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
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