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The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

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
Politics
Patriot
Wrong
Obey
Political
Temporary
Order
Servant
Cannot
Decide
Government
Determine
Originate
Right
Merely
Prerogative
Function
Orders

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The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name right.
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The rain ...falls upon the just and the unjust alike a thing which would not happen if I were superintending the rain's affairs. No, I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust outdoors, I would drown him.
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He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
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You can never find a Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this saving knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient 'people say.'
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To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, Our Country, right or wrong, and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?
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I like criticism, but it must be my way.
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In literature imitations do not imitate.
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Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
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A sense of humor is the one thing no one will admit to not having.
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Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.
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Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.
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Manifestly, dying is nothing to a really great and brave man.
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There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.
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Twenty-four years ago I was strangely handsome in San Francisco in the rainy season I was often mistaken for fair weather.
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A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.
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'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
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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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Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself.
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...Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the 'noblest work of God.'
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Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.
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