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A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
H. L. Mencken
Fame
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2
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
H. L. Mencken
Christian Church
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3
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H. L. Mencken
Cynics and Cynicism
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4
A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.
H. L. Mencken
Gentlemen
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5
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H. L. Mencken
Politicians and Politics
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6
A judge is a law student who grades his own papers.
H. L. Mencken
Law and Lawyers
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7
A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition.
H. L. Mencken
Men and Women
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8
A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four. For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent men.
H. L. Mencken
Metaphysics
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9
A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.
H. L. Mencken
Nun
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10
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
H. L. Mencken
Alcohol and Alcoholism
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11
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
H. L. Mencken
Originality
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12
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
H. L. Mencken
Adultery
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13
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
H. L. Mencken
Quotation
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14
Alimony -- the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. Mencken
Alimony
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15
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.
H. L. Mencken
Ideals and Idealism
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16
Archbishop -- A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. Mencken
Christian Church
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17
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
H. L. Mencken
Heart
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18
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
H. L. Mencken
Bachelor
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19
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't, they'd be married too.
H. L. Mencken
Bachelor
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20
Before a man speaks, it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks it is seldom necessary to assume.
H. L. Mencken
Speakers and Speaking
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21
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
H. L. Mencken
Conscience
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22
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
H. L. Mencken
Conscience
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23
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
H. L. Mencken
Critics and Criticism
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24
Democracy is also a form of religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
H. L. Mencken
Democracy
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25
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what They want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
Democracy
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26
Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
H. L. Mencken
Decency
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27
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
H. L. Mencken
Family
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28
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H. L. Mencken
Faith
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29
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
Problem
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30
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.
H. L. Mencken
Marriage
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31
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
H. L. Mencken
Voting
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32
God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters.
H. L. Mencken
God
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33
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.
H. L. Mencken
Government
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34
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.
H. L. Mencken
Humankind
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35
Historian -- an unsuccessful novelist.
H. L. Mencken
History and Historians
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36
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
H. L. Mencken
Honour
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37
How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
H. L. Mencken
Suffering
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38
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
H. L. Mencken
Husband
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39
Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices.
H. L. Mencken
Hygiene
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40
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
H. L. Mencken
Liberty
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41
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
H. L. Mencken
Truth
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42
I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
H. L. Mencken
Democracy
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43
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
H. L. Mencken
Action
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44
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
H. L. Mencken
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45
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
H. L. Mencken
Writers and Writing
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46
If I ever marry it will be on a sudden impulse, as a man shoots himself.
H. L. Mencken
Marriage
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47
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
H. L. Mencken
Trust
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48
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
H. L. Mencken
Heroes and Heroism
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Injustice is relatively easy to bear what stings is justice.
H. L. Mencken
Justice
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50
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
H. L. Mencken
Belief
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51
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it.
H. L. Mencken
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52
It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.
H. L. Mencken
Evolution
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53
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
H. L. Mencken
Truth
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54
It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
H. L. Mencken
Bachelor
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55
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. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.
H. L. Mencken
Imagination
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56
It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.
H. L. Mencken
Critics and Criticism
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57
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.
H. L. Mencken
Birth control
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58
It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
H. L. Mencken
Certainty
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59
Legend : a lie that has attained the dignity of age.
H. L. Mencken
Legend
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60
Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
H. L. Mencken
Colleges and Universities
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61
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
H. L. Mencken
Choice
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62
Life is a dead-end street.
H. L. Mencken
Life and Living
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63
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
H. L. Mencken
Love
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64
Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another.
H. L. Mencken
Love
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65
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
H. L. Mencken
Love
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66
Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it offers, life would become a mere syllogism and hence too metallic to be borne.
H. L. Mencken
Lies and Lying
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67
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
H. L. Mencken
Humankind
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68
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
H. L. Mencken
Men and Women
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69
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
H. L. Mencken
Men and Women
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70
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
H. L. Mencken
Doubt
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71
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later, for another thing, they die earlier.
H. L. Mencken
Men and Women
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72
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.
H. L. Mencken
Morality
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73
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
H. L. Mencken
Safety
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74
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.
H. L. Mencken
Flirting
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75
No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.
H. L. Mencken
Wisdom
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76
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
H. L. Mencken
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77
No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
H. L. Mencken
Farming and Farmers
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78
Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.
H. L. Mencken
Politicians and Politics
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79
On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
H. L. Mencken
Agreement
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80
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.
H. L. Mencken
Laughter
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81
One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.
H. L. Mencken
Prejudice
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82
Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
H. L. Mencken
Opera
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83
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
H. L. Mencken
Philosophers and Philosophy
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84
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. Mencken
Puritans
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85
Remorse is regret that one waited so long to do it.
H. L. Mencken
Remorse
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86
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
H. L. Mencken
Law and Lawyers
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87
School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.
H. L. Mencken
School
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88
Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
H. L. Mencken
Self-respect
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89
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
H. L. Mencken
Husband
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90
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
H. L. Mencken
Temptation
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91
The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.
H. L. Mencken
Pleasure
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92
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
H. L. Mencken
Humankind
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93
The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.
H. L. Mencken
Books and Reading
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94
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
H. L. Mencken
Money
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95
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
H. L. Mencken
Crime and Criminals
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96
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
H. L. Mencken
Democracy
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97
The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
H. L. Mencken
Incredulity
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98
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
H. L. Mencken
Cynics and Cynicism
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99
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
H. L. Mencken
Morality
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100
The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.
H. L. Mencken
Solutions
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