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Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.

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
Drink
Work
Never

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No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.
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There are no ugly cigars, only ugly smokers.
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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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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
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One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
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The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.
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Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.
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Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.
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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
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A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
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It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
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A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.
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The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
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Skin diseases are something doctors like, the patient neither dies nor gets well.
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The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
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