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It's my opinion that every one I know has morals, though I wouldn't like to ask. I know I have. But I'd rather teach them than practice them any day. Give them to others-that's my motto.

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
Every
Asks
Like
Practice
Moral
Though
Morals
Rather
Motto
Others
Wouldn
Give
Opinion
Giving
Teach

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.
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Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.
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Homely truth is unpalatable.
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Old habits cannot be thrown out the upstairs window. They have to be coaxed downstairs one step at a time.
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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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Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'
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What God lacks is convictions- stability of character. He ought to be a Presbyterian or a Catholic or something- not try to be everything.
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The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.
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We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it's efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read-
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The cigar-box which the European calls a 'lift' needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like a man's patent purge-it works.
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What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one's self-approval.
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The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all.
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Human beings seem to be a poor invention. If they are the noblest works of God where is the ignoblest?
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If we learned to walk and talk the way we learn to read and write, everyone would limp and stutter.
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They do say that when a man starts down hill everybody is ready to help him with a kick, and I suppose it is so.
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Thanksgiving day. Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks now, but the turkeys.
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A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
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True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god.
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Great enterprises usually promise vastly more than they perform.
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I like criticism, but it must be my way.
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