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The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.
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
Difficulty
Keep
Great
Men
Commandments
Gentleman
Keeping
Ten
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The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.
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As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
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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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Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.
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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
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There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
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Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
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To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong.
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Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals
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Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
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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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The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.
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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him.
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All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.
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