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Some of us cannot be optimists, but all of us can be bigamists

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
Optimists
Optimist
Optimism
Cannot

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When a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me.
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It is not in the least likely that any life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgment of the person who lived it.
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I've seen many troubles in my time, only half of which ever came true.
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Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot and there ain't any real difference between triplets and a insurrection. - The Babies speech 1879
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When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.
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I can live for two months on a good compliment.
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isn't so astonishing, the number of things that I can remember, as the number of things I can remember that aren't so.
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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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By and by when each nation has 20,000 battleships and 5,000,000 soldiers we shall all be safe and the wisdom of statesmanship will stand confirmed.
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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.
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When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Kentucky, because everything there happens 20 years after it happens anywhere else.
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I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being-that is enough for me he can't be any worse.
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When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.
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Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, apparently. What supports its poverty-stricken people or its Government, is a mystery.
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Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth
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A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
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If true, rarely beautiful. If beautiful, rarely true.
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I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
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No one can tell me what is a good cigar--for me. I am the only judge... There are no standards--no real standards. Each man's preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him.
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Politicians, old buildings, and prostitutes become respectable with age.
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