Mark Twain Quotes
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One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.
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My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
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How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.
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They spell it 'Vinci' and pronounce it 'Vinchy'. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.
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We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.
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Not a single right is indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses not a single permanent right. God is Might (and He is shifty, malicious, and uncertain).
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He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
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The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples - that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.
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When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
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Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
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Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
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Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
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Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, & over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite - but they all worship money.
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When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
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Enough, enough, enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!
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....it is not wise to keep the fire going under a slander unless you can get some large advantage out of keeping it alive. Few slanders can stand the wear of silence.
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Appendix D, The Awful German Language
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Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
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Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.
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Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.
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It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge.
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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.
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George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.
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The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.