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We are strange beings, we seem to go free, but we go in chains - chains of training, custom, convention, association, environment - in a word, Circumstance, and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain.

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
Strange
Customs
Environment
Strongest
Struggle
Chains
Bonds
Word
Vain
Convention
Free
Training
Custom
Seems
Beings
Circumstance
Circumstances
Conventions
Seem
Association

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It is hard enough luck being a monarch, without being a target also.
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I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.
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Between us, we cover all knowledge he knows all that can be known and I know the rest.
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Wherefore being all of one mind, we do highly resolve that government of the grafted by the grafter for the grafter shall not perish from the earth.
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We don't cut up when mad men are bred by the old legitimate regular stock religions, but we can't allow wildcat religions to indulge in such disastrous experiments.
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Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.
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It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.
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Life becomes fully understandable only the moment we realise that we are all mad.
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Our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows
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A little more kindness, A little less speed, A little more giving, A little less greed, A little more smile, A little less frown, A little less kicking, A man while he's down, A little more We, A little less I, A little more laugh, A little less cry, A little more flowers, On the pathway of life, And fewer on graves, At the end of the stri
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It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
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I would not read the proof of one of my books for any fair & reasonable sum whatever, if I could get out of it. The proof-reading on the P & Pauper cost me the last rags of my religion.
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We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking.
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We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
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Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is.
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You may have noticed that the less I know about a subject the more confidence I have, and the more new light I throw on it.
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Among other common lies, we have the silent lie - the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.
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When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.
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Next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping. . . you'd see the ax flash and come down-you don't hear nothing you see the ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the k'chunk!-it had took all that time to come over the water.
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