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H. L. Mencken

"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."

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"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."

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Asa Don Brown

"I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen."

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Asa Don Brown

"I suspect that most authors don't really want criticism, not even constructive criticism. They want straight-out, unabashed, unashamed, fulsome, informed, naked praise, arriving by the shipload every fifteen minutes or so."

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Asa Don Brown

"There is no such thing as constructive criticism. There is constructive advice, constructive guidance, constructive counsel, encouragement, suggestion, and instruction. Criticism, however, is not constructive but a destructive means of faultfinding that cripples all parties involved. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise."

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Asa Don Brown

"Learn to brush off criticism as easily as you brush aside hollow compliments."

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Asa Don Brown

"But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?"

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Asa Don Brown

"The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book."

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Asa Don Brown

"Some poems are written great, some poems are written swell. But then there are poems that could win a prize in Hell."

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Asa Don Brown

"And we hate this possibility in movies; we hate this "both" shit. "Both" comes off as sloppy characterization, muddy filmmaking, lack of focus. ... But I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it required of us an empathetic confrontation with the exact same muddy bothness in ourselves and our intimates that makes the real world of moral selves so tense and uncomfortable, a bothness we go to the movies to get a couple hours' fucking relief from."

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Asa Don Brown

"Act that way and slowly but surely I will fade away. All the dawns and all the twilights will rob me, piece by piece, of myself, and before long my very life will be shaved away completely - and I would end up nothing."

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Asa Don Brown

"What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!"

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"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good."
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"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable."
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H. L. Mencken
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."
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H. L. Mencken
"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it."
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"No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."
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H. L. Mencken
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."
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H. L. Mencken
"What men value in this world is not rights but privileges."
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H. L. Mencken
"Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself."
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"Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love."
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"Don't overestimate the decency of the human race."
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