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The vast majority of the race whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind at heart and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves.

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
Heart
Vast
Secretly
Kind
Presence
Savage
Anxiety
Shrinks
Dare
Savages
Majority
Minority
Pitiless
Race
Minorities
Inflicting
Whether
Aggressive
Shrink
Pain
Civilized
Assert

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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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Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on.
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You want to be very careful about lying otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught.
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There is no use in your walking five miles to fish when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful near home.
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In India, 'cold weather' is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
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But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.
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Love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just comes-none knows whence-and cannot explain itself.
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I was educated, I was trained, I was a Presbyterian and I knew how these things are done. I knew that in Biblical times if a man committed a sin the extermination of the whole surrounding nation-cattle and all-was likely to happen. I knew that Providence was not particular about the rest, so that He got somebody connected with the one He was after.
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All men are ignorant, just on different subjects.
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It is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.
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Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
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A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.
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I was born with Halley's Comet and I expect to die upon its return
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I have always been rather better treated in San Francisco than I actually deserved.
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... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often picturesque liar.
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When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
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I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.
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When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there- in sunny weather- stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose.
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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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Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
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