Quote

I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, and it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.

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
Becomes
Allowed
Soiled
Girl
Wrote
Sawyer
Find
Access
Finn
Mind
Adults
Distressed
Always
Clean
Washed
Never
Girls
Exclusively
Youth
Toms
Boys
Censorship
Huck

More quotes by Mark Twain

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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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If you're looking for friends when you need them...it's too late.
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Frankenstein took some flesh and bones and blood and made a man out of them the man ran away and fell to raping and robbing and murdering everywhere, and Frankenstein was horrified and in despair, and said, I made him, without asking his consent, and it makes me responsible for every crime he commits. I am the criminal, he is innocent.
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The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward.
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Stars and shadows ain't good to see by.
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For England must not fall: it would mean an inundation of Russian & German political degradations which would envelop the globe & steep it in a sort of Middle-Age night & slaverly which would last till Christ comes again - which I hope he will not do he made trouble enough before.
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If you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out!
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I had longed to be a butterfly, and I was one at last. I attended private parties in sumptuous evening dress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polkaed and schoisched with a step peculiar to myself - and the kangaroo.
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For we were little Christian children and early learned the value of forbidden fruit.
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There are too many stars in some places and not enough in others.
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Every one knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere.
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We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there.
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The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next.
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Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.
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It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent on him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.
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Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, political, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies.
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The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.
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A better idea than my own is to listen.
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When angry, count to four when very angry, swear.
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Apparently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the funeral of a religion.
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