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It has always been a peculiarity of the human race that it keeps two sets of morals in stock-the private and the real, and the public and the artificial.

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
Real
Keeps
Always
Private
Public
Race
Peculiarity
Moral
Morals
Two
Stock
Human
Artificial
Humans
Sets

More quotes by Mark Twain

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You cannot have all chiefs you gotta have Indians too. Perfect love cannot be without equality. A friend to everybody and to nobody is the same thing. We are all alike, on the inside.
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It takes me a long time to lose my temper, but once lost I could not find it with a dog.
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I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly but their wives had grown old. These were good women it is very wearing to be good.
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It makes one hope and believe that a day will come when, in the eye of the law, literary property will be as sacred as whiskey, or any other of the necessaries of life. It grieves me to think how far more profound and reverent a respect the law would have for literature if a body could only get drunk on it.
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Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
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I have tried getting up early, and I have tried getting up late-and the latter agrees with me best.
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The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.
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The weakest of all weak things is a virtue that has not been tested in the fire.
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There ain't nothing more to write about and I'm rotten glad of it, because if I'd know'd what trouble it was to make a book, I wouldn't a tackled it.
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Happiness ain't a thing in itself -it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.
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We Americans worship the almighty dollar! Well, it is a worthier god than Heredity Privilege.
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You can't make a life over. Society wouldn't let you if you would.
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Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brains. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat. Perhaps a couple of whales would be enough.
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The history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
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Heaven is the very last place to come to rest and don't you be afraid to bet on that!
Mark Twain
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Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.
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Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
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In my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race - never quite sane in the night.
Mark Twain
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You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present you should have recognized them earlier.
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I always did hate for anyone to know what my plans or hopes or prospects were—for, if I kept people in ignorance in these matters, no one could be disappointed but myself, if they were not realized.
Mark Twain