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Delicacy - a sad, sad false delicacy - robs literature of the two best things among its belongings: Family-circle narratives & obscene stories.

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
Stories
Circle
Best
Circles
Things
Narrative
Belongings
False
Robs
Among
Narratives
Literature
Delicacy
Family
Obscene
Two
Belonging

More quotes by Mark Twain

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I was standing in our dining-room thinking of nothing in particular, when a cablegram was put into my hand. It said, 'Susy was peacefully released today.' It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live.
Mark Twain
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A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificiant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.
Mark Twain
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Humor is like a frog if you dissect it, it dies.
Mark Twain
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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.
Mark Twain
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Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind it if you want to see it.
Mark Twain
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And so when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.
Mark Twain
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There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones it can lift men to angelship.
Mark Twain
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I do not allow my schooling to interfere with my education
Mark Twain
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Never knew before what eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German.
Mark Twain
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English humor is hard to appreciate, though, unless you are trained to it. The English papers, in reporting my speeches, always put 'laughter' in the wrong place.
Mark Twain
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I felt it was my duty to praise all of God's works with fervent enthusiasm. At the same time I killed flies in my house in a spirit of hatred, exasperation and contempt. My praise to God for all his works was dishonest, the act of killing the fly was honest.
Mark Twain
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A historian who would convey the truth has got to lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.
Mark Twain
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What do you think of the human mind? I mean, in case you think there is a human mind.
Mark Twain
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it is not wise to keep the fire going under a slander unless you can get some large advantage out of keeping it alive. Few slanders can stand the wear of silence.
Mark Twain
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We called him Barney for short. We couldn't use his real name, there wasn't time.
Mark Twain
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...Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the 'noblest work of God.'
Mark Twain
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The law is a system that protects everybody who can afford to hire a good lawyer.
Mark Twain
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What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.
Mark Twain
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I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds.
Mark Twain
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The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.
Mark Twain