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The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it

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
Logic
Tradition
Harder
Sawyer
Less
Inertia
Custom
Customs
Justify
Traditional

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As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.
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The average American's simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak.
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If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.
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There's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for only just the right kind.
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I am only human, although I regret it.
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Many public-school children seem to know only two dates—1492 and 4th of July and as a rule they don't know what happened on either occasion.
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Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
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The public is the only critic whose judgment is worth anything at all.
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The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.
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Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we can enjoy theirs. It is not strange for tastes are made, not born. I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired but after all, the Scotchman would shake his head and say, 'Where's your haggis?' and the Fijan would sigh and say, 'Where's your missionary?'
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Does the human being reason? No he thinks, muses, reflects, but does not reason...that is, in the two things which are the peculiar domain of the heart, not the mind, politics and religion. He doesn't want to know the other side. He wants arguments and statistics for his own side, and nothing more.
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I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, and it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.
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Don't go to sleep, so many people die there.
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Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. That is where the true evil lies.
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God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
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Tell me about a person's family, friends, and community, and I'll tell you what his opinions are.
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It is human to exaggerate the merits of the dead.
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We have an insanity plea that would have saved Cain.
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Morals are not the important thing-nor enlightenment-nor civilization. A man can do absolutely well without them, but he can't do without something to eat. The supremest thing is the need of the body, not of the mind and spirit.
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