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

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To eat is human, to digest, divine
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It's not the parts of the Bible I don't know that worries me...it's the parts that I do.
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Grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in.
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There isn't any way to libel the human race.
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Difference between savage and civilized man: one is painted, the other gilded.
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They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are gettin' ready to prove that a man's heirs ain't got any right to his property.
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When in doubt tell the truth.
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Truth is more of a stranger than fiction. When in doubt, tell the truth. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.
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Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch.
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I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
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When a man arrives at great prosperity God did it: when he falls into disaster he did it himself.
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The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.
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If you will notice, there is seldom a telegram in a paper which fails to show up one or more members & beneficiaries of our Civilization as promenading with his shirt-tail up & the rest of his regalia in the wash.
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when we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.
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The nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which from which.
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Pilgrim's Progress , about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.
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There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.
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He gossips habitually he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.
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But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie.
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I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.
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