Mark Twain Quotes
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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 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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Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
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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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The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
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In 'Huckleberry Finn,' I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had.
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He says every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind if you want to see it.
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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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...when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.
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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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Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
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I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
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I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little-not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.
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Mr. Roosevelt is the most formidable disaster that has befallen the country since the Civil War-but the vast mass of the nation loves him, is frantically fond of him, even idolizes him. This is the simple truth. It sounds like a libel upon the intelligence of the human race, but it isn't; there isn't any way to libel the intelligence of the human race.
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There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory.
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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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Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience - 4000 critics.
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I started out alone to seek adventures. You don't really have to seek them-that is nothing but a phrase-they come to you.
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Persons who think there is no such thing as luck-good or bad-are entitled to their opinion, although I think they ought to be shot for it.
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I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
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...in October 1866 I broke out as a lecturer, and from that day to this I have always been able to gain my living without doing any work; for the writing of books and magazine matter was always play, not work. I enjoyed it; it was merely billiards to me.
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Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
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It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
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It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people the Filipinos free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.