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Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.

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
Real
General
Diligently
Like
Beings
Conceal
World
Ones
Consumption
Opinion
Carefully
Give
Sane
Human
Opinions
Stead
Humans
Private
Cautiously
Giving
Intelligent
Fictitious

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I will remark in the way of general information, that in California, that land of felicitous nomenclature, the literary name of this sort of stuff is hogwash
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It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.
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We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.
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Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
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I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age in 1977 I shall be 142.
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Sometimes people do get hurt
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Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confided to my lifelong keeping. You cannot see its waves as they flow toward you, darling, but in these lines you will hear...the distant beating of its surf.
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A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic compliment.
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The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
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He had only one vanity he thought he could give advice better than any other person.
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These people´s God has shown them by a million acts that he respects none of the Bible´s statues. He breaks every one of them himself, adultery and all.
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I am only human, although I regret it.
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I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache and what is more, I never intend to have it.
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But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie.
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There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
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We adore titles and heredities in our hearts and ridicule them with our mouths. This is our democratic privilege.
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It is impossible that a genius - at least a literary genius - can ever be discovered by his intimates they are so close to him that he is out of focus to them and they can't get at his proportions they can't perceive that there is any considerable difference between his bulk and their own.
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There is not a single celebrated Southern name in any of the departments of human industry except those of war, assassination, lynching, murder, the duel, repudiation, & massacre.
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I don't believe there is anything in the whole earth that you can't learn in Berlin except the German language.
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Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened.
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