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The convention missionaries call modesty has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature and reason and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anybody's whim - anybody's diseased caprice.

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
Subjects
Modesty
Call
Conventions
Artificiality
Nature
Opposed
Caprice
Cannot
Standard
Missionaries
Reason
Subject
Diseased
Standards
Whim
Therefore
Convention
Anybody
Clothings

More quotes by Mark Twain

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When I take up one of Jane Austen's books ... I feel like a barkeep entering the kingdom of heaven. I know what his sensation would be and his private comments. He would not find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so.
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Low comedies are written for the drawing-room, the kitchen and the stable, and if you cut out the kitchen and the stable the drawing-room can't support the play by itself.
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There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable report - the native novelist. ... And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people and not anywhere else can these be had.
Mark Twain
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The choir always tittered and whispered all through the service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was.
Mark Twain
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A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.
Mark Twain
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I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.
Mark Twain
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No throne exists that has a right to exist, and no symbol of it, flying from any flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but the skull and crossbones of that kindred industry which differs from royalty only businesswise-merely as retail differs from wholesale.
Mark Twain
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Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.
Mark Twain
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There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.
Mark Twain
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All my life I have been honest-comparatively honest. I could never use money I had not made honestly-I could only lend it.
Mark Twain
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If you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
Mark Twain
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Unused talents gives you no advantage over someone who has no talent at all.
Mark Twain
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Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.
Mark Twain
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I could forgive the boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!
Mark Twain
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For we were little Christian children and early learned the value of forbidden fruit.
Mark Twain
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I try never to let my schooling get in the way of my education.
Mark Twain
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Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are God's jokes.
Mark Twain
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It is impossible that a genius - at least a literary genius - can ever be discovered by his intimates they are so close to him that he is out of focus to them and they can't get at his proportions they can't perceive that there is any considerable difference between his bulk and their own.
Mark Twain
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the more I know about people, the better I like my dogs.
Mark Twain
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Hero: Person in a book who does things which he can't and girl marries him for it.
Mark Twain