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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.

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
Love
Masters
Securing
Life
Results
Approval
Humanity
Necessity
Call
Revenge
Success
Impulse
Hate
Forgiveness
Self
Charity
Different
Master

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A pessimist is a well-informed optimist.
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The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.
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There is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule.
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A good and wholesome thing is a little harmless fun in this world it tones a body up and keeps him human and prevents him from souring.
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Man seems to be a rickety poor sort of thing, any way you take him a kind of British Museum of infirmities and inferiorities. He is always undergoing repairs. A machine that was as unreliable as he is would have no market.
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Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest you want them all to land in hell together, and right away.
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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.
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Man proposes, but God blocks the game.
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God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New--the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance.
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A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.
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The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad.
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Temperate temperance is best intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.
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It's an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.
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Creed and opinion change with time, and their symbols perish but Literature and its temples are sacred to all creeds and inviolate.
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... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often picturesque liar.
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The insincerity of man-all men are liars, partial or hiders of facts, half tellers of truths, shirks, moral sneaks. When a merely honest man appears he is a comet-his fame is eternal-needs no genius, no talent-mere honesty
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There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to but a hog is different.
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The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
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His money is twice tainted: taint yours and taint mine.
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Jim said that bees won't sting idiots, but I didn't believe that, because I tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn't sting me.
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