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A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.

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
Protector
Creator
Liberty
Freedom
Human
Humans
Irreverence
Discriminating

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You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.
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Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection-that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement.
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It used to be a good hotel, but that proves nothing - I used to be a good boy.
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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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Conformity—the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority.
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In my schoolboy days I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware there was anything wrong about it. No-one arraigned it in my hearing the local papers said nothing against it the local pulpit taught us that God approved it, that it was a holy thing, and that the doubter need only look in the Bible if he wished to settle his mind.
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Therein lies the defect of revenge: it's all in the anticipation the thing itself is a pain, not a pleasure at least the pain is the biggest end of it.
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A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle.
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The fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he was a man and when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him.
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I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it.
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The North thinks it knows how to make corn bread, but this is a gross superstition. Perhaps no bread in the world is quite as good as Southern corn bread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite as bad as the Northern imitation of it.
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A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.
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Our lives, our liberty, and our property are never in greater danger than when Congress is in session.
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By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.
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Distance lends enchantment to the view.
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For England must not fall: it would mean an inundation of Russian & German political degradations which would envelop the globe & steep it in a sort of Middle-Age night & slaverly which would last till Christ comes again - which I hope he will not do he made trouble enough before.
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The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.
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Patriotism is merely a religion-love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country's flag and honor and welfare.
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But we are all insane, anyway ... The suicides seem to be the only sane people.
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You cant reach old age by another man's road, my habits protect my life but they would assassinate you
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