H. L. Mencken Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Believe with all your heart that you will do what you were made to do. Never for an instant harbor a doubt of it.
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Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
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With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents.
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As much preparation as I had made for the old man Salieri, gestures and so on, the fact is after sitting for hours, your movements are kind of slow.
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A lot of newspaper columns used to be written in a rat-a-tat-tat, fast-paced style - and they tended to be funny. They were a little relief from the grimmer, grayer parts of the newspaper, and one of the best people at doing this was Will Rogers.
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I don't believe in regret.
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I believe love at first sight is possible. Centuries of literature and art and beauty has been dedicated to that idea, so who am I to argue, even if I've never experienced it?
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When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
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The law of the Creator, which invests every human being with an inalienable title to freedom, cannot be repealed by any interior law which asserts that man is property.
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Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
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Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
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Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death.
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I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.
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There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.
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Don't jump on a man unless he is down.
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Yes, I believe the will is very important. It's how I have succeeded in life.
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Turns out you have a really fun time if you go to work every day and focus on being silly and funny and happy!
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I believe a true Hindu in India could never have endorsed the killing of the Mahatma.
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My first job was as a day laborer on the construction of the Long Island Expressway more than 50 years ago.
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Politeness makes one appear outwardly as they should be within.
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It is rather striking to think that the very core of the Christian message, salvation itself, the sacrifice of God's own son to rescue humanity from eternal damnation, should be framed in the language of a financial transaction.
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Perhaps the only thing worse than fear is apathy. Fear makes us do horrible things to people. Apathy makes us allow horrible things to happen to them.
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As long as I feel like I'm helping kids get better, I don't see why I should stop.
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It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
