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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.

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
Writers
Hens
Asks
Patiently
Write
Farmer
Wells
Cows
Well
Farmers
Writing
Eggs
Stands
Lays
Underprivileged

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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
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Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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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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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
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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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During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year.
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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
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No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
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Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.
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The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.
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The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
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Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.
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Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
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The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?
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The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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