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All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
Mark Twain -
There has never been a Protestant boy nor a Protestant girl whose mind the Bible has not soiled.
Mark Twain
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You cannot lay bare your private soul and look at it. You are too much ashamed of yourself. It is too disgusting. For that reason I confine myself to drawing the portraits of others.
Mark Twain -
We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.
Mark Twain -
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
Mark Twain -
Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
Mark Twain -
To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.
Mark Twain -
William Dean Howells applauded, and was full of praises and endorsement, which was wise in him and judicious. If he had manifested a different spirit I would have thrown him out of the window. I like criticism, but it must be my way.
Mark Twain
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He George Washington Cable has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it.
Mark Twain -
We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.
Mark Twain -
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
Mark Twain -
Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.
Mark Twain -
I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo - that man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture - great in every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast - for luncheon - for dinner - for tea - for supper - for between meals. I like a change, occasionally.
Mark Twain -
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
Mark Twain
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The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
Mark Twain -
Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare.
Mark Twain -
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
Mark Twain -
Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.
Mark Twain -
Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
Mark Twain -
Adam, at Eve's grave: Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden.
Mark Twain
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When grown-up persons indulge in practical jokes, the fact gauges them. They have lived narrow, obscure, and ignorant lives, and at full manhood they still retain and cherish a job lot of left-over standards and ideals that would have been discarded with their boyhood if they had then moved out into the world and a broader life.
Mark Twain -
Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it.
Mark Twain -
I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true; but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran over every dog that came along.
Mark Twain -
The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds! You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. The railroads are good enough for me.
Mark Twain