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The Puritan, Of Course, Is Not Entirely Devoid Of Aesthetic Feeling. He Has A Taste For Good Form; He Responds To Style; He Is Even Capable Of Something Approaching A Purely Aesthetic Emotion. But He Fears This Aesthetic Emotion As An Insinuating Distraction From His Chief Business In Life: The Sober Consideration Of The All-important Problem Of Conduct. Art Is A Temptation, A Seduction, A Lorelei, And The Good Man May Safely Have Traffic With It When It Is Broken To Moral Uses--in Other Words, When Its Innocence Is Pumped Out Of It, And It Is Purged Of Gusto.

-H. L. Mencken

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The Puritan, Of Course,

H. L. Mencken

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The Puritan, Of Course, Is Not Entirely Devoid Of Aesthetic Feeling. He Has A Taste For Good Form; He Responds To Style; He Is Even Capable Of Something Approaching A Purely Aesthetic Emotion. But He Fears This Aesthetic Emotion As An Insinuating Distraction From His Chief Business In Life: The Sober Consideration Of The All-important Problem Of Conduct. Art Is A Temptation, A Seduction, A Lorelei, And The Good Man May Safely Have Traffic With It When It Is Broken To Moral Uses--in Other Words, When Its Innocence Is Pumped Out Of It, And It Is Purged Of Gusto.

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The Main Thing That Every Political Campaign In The United States Demonstrates Is That The Politicians Of All Parties, Despite Their Superficial Enmities, Are Really Members Of One Great Brotherhood. Their Principal, And Indeed Their Sole, Object Is To Collar Public Office, With All The Privileges And Profits That Go Therewith. They Achieve This Collaring By Buying Votes With Other People's Money.

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An Author, Like Any Other So-called Artist, Is A Man In Whom The Normal Vanity Of All Men Is So Vastly Exaggerated That He Finds It A Sheer Impossibility To Hold It In. His Over-powering Impulse Is To Gyrate Before His Fellow Men, Flapping His Wings And Emitting Defiant Yells. This Being Forbidden By The Police Of All Civilized Nations, He Takes It Out By Putting His Yells On Paper. Such Is The Thing Called Self-expression.

Suppose Two-thirds Of The Members Of The National House Of Representatives Were Dumped Into The Washington Garbage Incinerator Tomorrow, What Would We Lose To Offset Our Gain Of Their Salaries And The Salaries Of Their Parasites?

It Is Impossible To Believe That The Same God Who Permitted His Own Son To Die A Bachelor Regards Celibacy As An Actual Sin.

Henry James Would Have Been Vastly Improved As A Novelist By A Few Whiffs Of The Chicago Stockyard.

One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten Thousand Syllogisms. It Is Not Only More Effective; It Is Also Vastly More Intelligent.

Women Hate Revolutions And Revolutionists. They Like Men Who Are Docile, And Well-regarded At The Bank, And Never Late At Meals.

There Are Two Impossibilities In Life: "just One Drink" And "an Honest Politician."

A Gentlemen Is One Who Never Strikes A Woman Without Provocation.

Every Step In Human Progress, From The First Feeble Stirrings In The Abyss Of Time, Has Been Opposed By The Great Majority Of Men. Every Valuable Thing That Has Been Added To The Store Of Man's Possessions Has Been Derided By Them When It Was New, And Destroyed By Them When They Had The Power. They Have Fought Every New Truth Ever Heard Of, And They Have Killed Every Truth-seeker Who Got Into Their Hands.

Puritanism. The Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Happy.

Friendship Is A Common Belief In The Same Fallacies, Mountebanks And Hobgoblins.

I'm Thoroughly Convinced That Editors Don't Help Authors.

A Man May Be A Fool And Not Know It, But Not If He Is Married.

The Military Caste Did Not Originate As A Party Of Patriots, But As A Party Of Bandits

...no Man Of Genuinely Superior Intelligence Has Ever Been An Actor. Even Supposing A Young Man Of Appreciable Mental Powers To Be Lured Upon The Stage, As Philosophers Are Occasionally Lured Into Bordellos, His Mind Would Be Inevitably And Almost Immediately Destroyed By The Gaudy Nonsense Issuing From His Mouth Every Night.

The State Doesn't Just Want You To Obey, It Wants To Make You Want To Obey.

Citizenship In New York Is Now Worth No More Than Citizenship In Arkansas, For It Is Open To Any Applicant From The Marshes Of Bessarabia, And, Still Worse, To Any Applicant From Arkansas.

Pedagogues: More Than Any Other Class Of Blind Leaders Of The Blind They Are Responsible For The Degrading Standardization Which Now Afflicts The American People.

To Believe That Russia Has Got Rid Of The Evils Of Capitalism Takes A Special Kind Of Mind. It Is The Same Kind Of Mind That Believes That A Holy Roller Has Got Rid Of Sin.

Politics, As Hopeful Men Practise It In The World, Consists Mainly Of The Delusion That A Change In Form Is A Change In Substance.

To Denounce Moralizing Out Of Hand Is To Pronounce A Moral Judgment.

The Late William Jennings Bryan, L.l.d., Always Had One Great Advantage In Controversy; He Was Never Burdened With An Understanding Of His Opponent's Case.

No Man Is Worthy Of Unlimited Reliance-his Treason, At Best, Only Waits For Sufficient Temptation.

Life Without Sex Might Be Safer But It Would Be Unbearably Dull

No Form Of Liberty Is Worth A Darn [sic] Which Doesn't Give Us The Right To Do Wrong Now And Then.

It Seems To Me That A Great University Ought To Have Room In It For Men Subscribing To Every Sort Of Idea That Is Currently Prevalent

The Notion That Artists Flourish Upon Adversity And Misunderstanding, That They Are Able To Function To The Utmost In An Atmosphere Of Indifference Or Hostility - This Notion Is Nine-tenths Nonsense.

The Art Of Writing, Like The Art Of Love, Runs All The Way From A Kind Of Routine Hard To Distinguish From Piling Bricks To A Kind Of Frenzy Closely Related To Delirium Tremens.

I Well Recall My Horror When I Heard For The First Time, Of A Journalist Who Had Laid In A Pair Of What Were Then Called Bicycle Pants And Taken To Golf; It Was As If I Had Encountered A Studhorse With His Hair Done Up In Frizzes, And Pink Bowknots Peeking Out Of Them. It Seemed, In Some Vague Way, Ignominious, And Even A Bit Indelicate.

The Other Day A Dog Peed On Me. A Bad Sign.

Justice Is What You Get When You Run Out Of Money.

Correct Spelling, Indeed, Is One Of The Arts That Are Far More Esteemed By Schoolma’ams Than By Practical Men, Neck-deep In The Heat And Agony Of The World.

The Intellectual Heritage Of The Race Belongs To The Minority.

All Government, Of Course, Is Against Liberty.

Journalism Is To Politician As Dog Is To Lamp-post.

The Old Testament, As Everyone Who Has Looked Into It Is Aware, Drips With Blood; There Is, Indeed, No More Bloody Chronicle In All The Literature Of The World.

The One Permanent Emotion Of The Inferior Man Is Fear - Fear Of The Unknown, The Complex, The Inexplicable. What He Wants Above Everything Else Is Safety.

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