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I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie I can, but I won't.

Mark Twain

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Mark Twain
Age: 74 †
Born: 1835
Born: November 30
Died: 1910
Died: April 21
Aphorist
Author
Autobiographer
Humorist
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Teacher
Florida
Missouri
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Samuel L. Clemens
Samuel Clemens
Higher
Principles
Grander
Lying
Standard
Truth
George
Washington
Principle
Standards
Motivational

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Men are like bank accounts. The more money, the more interest they generate.
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It is easier for a cannibal to enter the Kingdom of Heaven through the eye of a rich man's needle that it is for any other foreigner to read the terrible German script.
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Optimist: day-dreamer in his small clothes.
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Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.
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Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the pen and put them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside then all that ink and labor are wasted because I can't print the results
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Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress but I repeat myself.
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when we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.
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As a rule we develop a borrowed European idea forward, and ... Europe develops a borrowed American idea backwards.
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Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
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Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.
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If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.
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Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle headedness - and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all, that is what I was at nineteen and twenty.
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Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
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In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him.
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More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the [biblical] texts that authorised them remain.
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Two days overdue, THE WORLD'S WORK has not reached me. Pray make a note of this. I would rather not have to resort to violence.
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There ain't anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about.
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Whenever the human race assembles to a number exceeding four, it cannot stand free speech.
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The human race is a race of cowards and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.
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If a spectacle is going to be particularly imposing I prefer to see it through somebody else's eyes, because that man will always exaggerate. Then I can exaggerate his exaggeration, and my account of the thing will be the most impressive.
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