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But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.

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
Youth
Cannot
Heart
Compressed
Long
Elastic
Time
Sawyer
Constrained
Shape
Shapes

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If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.
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The dreamer's valuation of a thing lost - not another man's - is the only standard to measure it by, and his grief for it makes it large and great and fine, and is worthy of our reverence in all cases.
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Those people.... early stricken of God, intellectually - the departmental interpreters of the laws in Washington... can always be depended on to take any reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it.
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I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.
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The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
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Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. You cannot eliminate habits that no longer serve you. You can only replace them with new habits that support your goals. Moment by moment, you need to live with awareness and structure the habits that you include or exclude in your days.
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No child should be permitted to grow up without exercise for imagination. It enriches life for him. It makes things wonderful and beautiful.
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I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
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[I] shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes. Indeed, upon second thought, I will not use it then, for it is unchristian, inelegant, and degrading--though to speak truly I do not see how house rent and taxes are going to be discussed worth a cent without it.
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He [George Washington Cable] has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it.
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Education is what remains when what is learned has been taken away.
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Cherimoya, the most delicious fruit known to men.
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A woman springs a sudden reproach upon you which provokes a hot retort, and then she will presently ask you to apologize.
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How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man while he sleeps!
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There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought -a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!
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Once I talked to the inmates of an insane asylum in Hartford. I have talked to idiots a thousand times, but only once to the insane.
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A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty.
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Only he who has seen better days and lives to see better days again knows their full value.
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Do something everyday that you don't want to do this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
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We grant God the possession of all the qualities of mind except the one that keeps the others healthy that watches over their dignity that focuses their vision true--humor.
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