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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.

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
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Lascivious
Comforting
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Poetry
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Fiction

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It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
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Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
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[Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.
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This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.
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Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
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There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.
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The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.
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Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.
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Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.
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Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
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A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks a woman loses hers after four kisses.
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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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Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.
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Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.
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Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.
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It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.
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In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
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