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HL Mencken is seriously the most 180 writer & wit in US history

and yes I have heard of Mark Twain. Here are a few exampl...
aphrodisiac depressive state
  04/12/13
Ah, I was all about to be like "(Guy who never read Mar...
Vibrant Lemon Boiling Water Hissy Fit
  04/12/13
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. Th...
aphrodisiac depressive state
  04/12/13
Convince me Mencken isn't a Nietzschean epigone
Internet-worthy gaping parlor
  04/12/13
Mencken is funnier, but clearly he read a lot of Nietzsche.
aphrodisiac depressive state
  04/12/13
great
Opaque cowardly clown
  03/29/14
Sounds like a shitlib. There is no progress in morals.
electric menage striped hyena
  05/14/24
(2014 xo v 2024 xo)
carmine slippery dysfunction jap
  05/14/24
...
disrespectful step-uncle's house reading party
  04/12/13
These are far from his best lines breh
disrespectful step-uncle's house reading party
  04/12/13
these are lines I encountered in 4 hours of reading Mencken....
aphrodisiac depressive state
  04/12/13
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of t...
saffron blathering persian
  04/12/13
The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert o...
aphrodisiac depressive state
  04/12/13
eh
coral racy dingle berry
  04/12/13
...
charcoal sweet tailpipe generalized bond
  05/14/24
(david simon)
wonderful shimmering half-breed
  04/12/13
[T]he American people, taking one with the other, are the mo...
aphrodisiac depressive state
  04/12/13
...
Green ticket booth
  03/29/14
It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, ...
Adulterous shaky new version pistol
  04/15/14
The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ev...
Adulterous shaky new version pistol
  04/15/14
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have ...
Adulterous shaky new version pistol
  04/15/14
The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-t...
Adulterous shaky new version pistol
  04/15/14
Do they believe that the aim of teaching English is to incre...
Adulterous shaky new version pistol
  04/15/14
Misogynist — A man who hates women as much as women hate one...
Adulterous shaky new version pistol
  04/15/14
...
crystalline adventurous crackhouse telephone
  05/14/24
...
Cheese-eating chartreuse gunner sanctuary
  05/14/24
idk if pithy zingers make one a great writer. if they did, t...
charcoal sweet tailpipe generalized bond
  05/14/24
He could also actually write good fiction. Mencken is a fake...
Cerise brunch marketing idea
  05/14/24
...
charcoal sweet tailpipe generalized bond
  05/14/24
I have been to his house in Baltimore. Sadly deep in ghetto ...
Sienna idiotic place of business
  05/14/24
I thought he made kitchen knives
Onyx Supple Office
  05/14/24


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Date: April 12th, 2013 4:59 PM
Author: aphrodisiac depressive state

and yes I have heard of Mark Twain.

Here are a few examples:

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.

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.

---

he has thousands of lines like this

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985387)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:16 PM
Author: Vibrant Lemon Boiling Water Hissy Fit

Ah, I was all about to be like "(Guy who never read Mark Twain)"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985478)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:00 PM
Author: aphrodisiac depressive state

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985396)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:06 PM
Author: Internet-worthy gaping parlor

Convince me Mencken isn't a Nietzschean epigone

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985424)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:09 PM
Author: aphrodisiac depressive state

Mencken is funnier, but clearly he read a lot of Nietzsche.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985435)



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Date: March 29th, 2014 10:29 PM
Author: Opaque cowardly clown

great

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#25287206)



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Date: May 14th, 2024 4:05 PM
Author: electric menage striped hyena

Sounds like a shitlib. There is no progress in morals.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#47661306)



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Date: May 14th, 2024 8:37 PM
Author: carmine slippery dysfunction jap

(2014 xo v 2024 xo)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#47662053)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:00 PM
Author: disrespectful step-uncle's house reading party



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985398)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:01 PM
Author: disrespectful step-uncle's house reading party

These are far from his best lines breh

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985402)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:02 PM
Author: aphrodisiac depressive state

these are lines I encountered in 4 hours of reading Mencken. His best quotes are everywhere.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985409)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:01 PM
Author: saffron blathering persian

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985405)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:03 PM
Author: aphrodisiac depressive state

The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians — and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse. The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe — that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985414)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:04 PM
Author: coral racy dingle berry

eh

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985417)



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Date: May 14th, 2024 3:57 PM
Author: charcoal sweet tailpipe generalized bond



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#47661273)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:05 PM
Author: wonderful shimmering half-breed

(david simon)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985420)



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Date: April 12th, 2013 5:07 PM
Author: aphrodisiac depressive state

[T]he American people, taking one with the other, are the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goosesteppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the Middle Ages.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#22985425)



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Date: March 29th, 2014 10:19 PM
Author: Green ticket booth



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#25287131)



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Date: April 15th, 2014 7:17 PM
Author: Adulterous shaky new version pistol

It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#25389120)



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Date: April 15th, 2014 7:18 PM
Author: Adulterous shaky new version pistol

The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Huxley—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Darwin? . . . They are laughing at Nietzsche yet . . .

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#25389126)



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Date: April 15th, 2014 7:19 PM
Author: Adulterous shaky new version pistol

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#25389129)



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Date: April 15th, 2014 7:19 PM
Author: Adulterous shaky new version pistol

The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty — and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#25389131)



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Date: April 15th, 2014 7:20 PM
Author: Adulterous shaky new version pistol

Do they believe that the aim of teaching English is to increase the exact and beautiful use of the language? Or that it is to inculcate and augment patriotism? Or that it is to diminish sorrow in the home? Or that it has some other end, cultural, economic, or military? ... it was their verdict by a solemn referendum that the principal objective in teaching English was to make good spellers, and that after that came the breeding of good capitalizers. … I have maintained for years, sometimes perhaps with undue heat: that pedagogy in the United States is fast descending to the estate of a childish necromancy, and that the worst idiots, even among pedagogues, are the teachers of English. It is positively dreadful to think that the young of the American species are exposed day in and day out to the contamination of such dark minds. What can be expected of education that is carried on in the very sewers of the intellect? How can morons teach anything that is worth knowing?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#25389137)



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Date: April 15th, 2014 7:23 PM
Author: Adulterous shaky new version pistol

Misogynist — A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#25389154)



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Date: May 14th, 2024 9:38 PM
Author: crystalline adventurous crackhouse telephone



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#47662192)



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Date: May 14th, 2024 3:52 PM
Author: Cheese-eating chartreuse gunner sanctuary



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#47661258)



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Date: May 14th, 2024 3:58 PM
Author: charcoal sweet tailpipe generalized bond

idk if pithy zingers make one a great writer. if they did, then ambrose bierce would have to be up there

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#47661277)



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Date: May 14th, 2024 4:44 PM
Author: Cerise brunch marketing idea

He could also actually write good fiction. Mencken is a fake Liberal Artist.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#47661417)



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Date: May 14th, 2024 4:47 PM
Author: charcoal sweet tailpipe generalized bond



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#47661422)



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Date: May 14th, 2024 4:48 PM
Author: Sienna idiotic place of business

I have been to his house in Baltimore. Sadly deep in ghetto territory. The surrounding neighborhood is great for modern day urban archeology. Look! There used to be a decent middle class neighborhood!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#47661428)



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Date: May 14th, 2024 4:49 PM
Author: Onyx Supple Office

I thought he made kitchen knives

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2227062&forum_id=2#47661431)