Mark Twain Quotes
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Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
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A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.
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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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It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
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I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully with the average Jew in business-in either straight business or the questionable sort.
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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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Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
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We have been housekeeping a fortnight, now-long enough to have learned how to pronounce the servants' names, but not how to spell them. We shan't ever learn to spell them; they were invented in Hungary and Poland, and on paper they look like the alphabet out on a drunk.
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Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
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Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
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I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.
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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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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 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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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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No accident ever comes late; it always arrives precisely on time.
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Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
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I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping.
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Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane-but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it is evidence that you are a lunatic.
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A critic never made or killed a book or a play. The people themselves are the final judges. It is their opinion that counts. After all, the final test is truth. But the trouble is that most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession and therefore are most economical in its use.
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Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs-the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest-you want them all to land in hell together, and right away.
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Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.
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What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.
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There are lies, damned lies and statistics.