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

More quotes by Mark Twain

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There are no accidents, all things have a deep and calculated purpose sometimes the methods employed by Providence seem strange and incongruous, but we have only to be patient and wait for the result: then we recognize that no others would have answered the purpose, and we are rebuked and humbled.
Mark Twain
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Optimist: day dreamer more elegantly spelled.
Mark Twain
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When I was fourteen years old, I was amazed at how unintelligent my father was. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was astounded how much he had learned in the last seven years.
Mark Twain
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A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.
Mark Twain
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That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace.
Mark Twain
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Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
Mark Twain
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It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Mark Twain
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Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute.
Mark Twain
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As a boy, I once saw a cart of melons that sorely tempted me. I sneaked up to the cart and stole a melon. I went into the alley to devour it, but no sooner had I set my teeth into it, than I paused, a strange feeling coming over me. I came to a quick conclusion. Firmly, I walked up to that cart, replaced the melon - and took a ripe one.
Mark Twain
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Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain
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There are two things nobody should ever have to watch being made, sausage and laws.
Mark Twain
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Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Mark Twain
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All saints can do miracles, but few of them can keep a hotel.
Mark Twain
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Your friends may love you in private but your enemies will hate you in public.
Mark Twain
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Education is what remains when what is learned has been taken away.
Mark Twain
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Great enterprises usually promise vastly more than they perform.
Mark Twain
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Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
Mark Twain
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Let us be grateful to Adam: he cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of labor.
Mark Twain
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The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
Mark Twain
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The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label.
Mark Twain