Mark Twain Quotes
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There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.
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Jesus died to save men - a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for the race that would have been act of a size proper to a god, & would have saved the whole race. However, why should anybody want to save the human race, or damn it either? Does God want its society? Does Satan?
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There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a Dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And You are but a Thought - a vagrant Thought, a useless Thought, a homeless Thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities.
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...a professor in one of the great female colleges. That odious form is common, and I submit and use it, though it offends me as much as it would to say female brickbat or female snow-storm or female geography.
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Whenever the human race assembles to a number exceeding four, it cannot stand free speech.
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The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.
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That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane.
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He is a stranger to me, but he is a most remarkable man - and I am the other one. Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known, and I know the rest.
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I like the truth sometimes, but I don't care enough for it to hanker after it. And besides, I have lived with liars so long that I have lost the tune, & a fact jars upon me like a discord.
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Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
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I sent down a circular check to the office to be cashed-a check good for its face in any part of the world, as any ordinary ass would know-but the ass who was assifying for the Queen Anne Mansions on salary didn't know it; indeed I think that his assitude transcended any assfulness I have ever met in this world or elsewhere.
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Better a broken promise than none at all.
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Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
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I never smoke to excess - that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.
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So there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it and aint't agoing to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before.
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Ages of restriction to the one tool which the law was not able to take from him-his brain-have made that tool singularly competent...
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A Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle.
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Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all - the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.
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God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
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I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.
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There was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only 'hooking,' while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing - and there was a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing.
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There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life-life's 'experiences'-are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never know one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side.
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No accident ever comes late; it always arrives precisely on time.
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Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.