H. L. Mencken Quotes

The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.

Quotes to Explore
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You can only begin to share life well when you think well of yourself.
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I have a Lamborghini Diablo. I have Mercedes 600, a 500, a 300, a 190. I have a Ferrari Testarossa, a Porsche speedster.
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When you play on a team, you learn that there will always be five guys you like, a bunch of guys who are OK, and five you despise. The trick to getting along in any system is not to worry about the five you despise.
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I like seeing girls throw down.
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I am a Zionist.
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Before you begin designing or buying anything, you need to get real and ask yourself: What do you really want to use this room for? What do you want to do in this room but can't now?
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I want to win football games.
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Once you're a Virginian, you're always a Virginian.
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Are we not all desperate one way or another?
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If the future, as imagined in literature, is really the present taken to extremes, then the past is also the present, but boiled down.
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I made a very conscious decision to quit acting. I was on a series, and we were in the process of renegotiating. They had an idea of what they thought I was worth, and I had an idea that was quite different.
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My grandparents lived in Hollywood, and I was surrounded by the romanticism of movies ever since I was a child.
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The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
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Looking around, I saw so many unhappy adults, people who loathed their jobs, and I didn't want to be one of them.
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Privacy isn't negotiable. It's the right of every American.
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I think celebrities suck.
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The book I always say that influenced me, subconsciously, because at the time I didn't know I wanted to be a writer, was William Goldman's 'Marathon Man.' That was the first adult thriller that I loved. I read it when I was 15 or so, when my father gave it to me.
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A man in debt is so far a slave.
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A useful analogy is to see traditional societies as relying on instantaneous (or minimally delayed) and constantly replenished solar income, while modern civilization is withdrawing accumulated solar capital at rates that will exhaust it in a tiny fraction of the time that was needed to create it.
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The two great agents of the physical world have become subject to the will of man and have been made subservient to his wants and enjoyments; I allude to steam and electricity, under whatever name the latter may be called.
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Without consciousness and intelligence, the universe would lack meaning.
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What I have to say, I say face to face.
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Coming down off the trail, I am lost in my own thoughts and unprepared when a bear chugs across the path just before it gives out on the gravel road. I am so distracted that I keep walking towards the bear. I only stop when it rears, stands on hind legs, and stares at me, sensitive nose pressed into the air, weak eyes searching. I have never been this close to a wild bear before, but I am not frightened. There is no menace in its stance; it is not even curious. The bear seems to know who or what I am. The bear is not impressed.
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.