Mark Twain Quotes
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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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Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.
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Herodotus says, 'Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.'
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Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare.
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Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.
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I think the President is clearly insane in several ways, and insanest upon war and its supreme glories. I think he longs for a big war wherein he can spectacularly perform as chief general and chief admiral, and go down in history as the only monarch of modern times that has served both offices at the same time.
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When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
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God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
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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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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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'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
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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.
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In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
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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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The late Bill Nye once said 'I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds.'
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How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!
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'In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot'
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Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.
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Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
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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.
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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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Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
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Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
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I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.