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“Away with your croakings about the futility of life,” he wrote in the summer of 1915. “That it is meaningless I grant you, but surely not futile. So long as there is the joy of a job well-done—whether an epic, a fried egg or a murder—there will be plenty of excuses for remaining alive.”

— H. L. Mencken Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)

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More quotes by H. L. Mencken

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Smart Set (1910)

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

Prejudices, Third Series (1922)

The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: H. L. Mencken (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.