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Never tell a lie-except for practice.

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
Except
Practice
Lying
Tell
Never

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Jesus died to save men - a small thing for an immortal to do - and didn't save many, anyway. But if he had been damned for the race, that would have been act of a size proper to a god, and would have saved the whole race.
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There are some natures which never grow large enough to speak out and say a bad act is a bad act, until they have inquired into the politics or the nationality of the man who did it.
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I have been cautioned to talk but be careful not to say anything. I do not consider this a difficult task.
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Adam did not want the apple for the apple's sake he wanted it because it was forbidden.
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The proverb says that Providence protects children and idiots. This is really true. I know because I have tested it.
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An occultation of Venus is not half so difficult as an eclipse of the sun, but because it comes seldom the world thinks it's a grand thing.
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This autobiography of mine is a mirror, and I am looking at myself in it all the time. Incidentally I notice the people that pass along at my back - I get glimpses of them in the mirror - and whenever they say or do anything that can help advertise me and flatter me and raise me in my own estimation, I set these things down in my autobiography.
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I was exceedingly delighted with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there the difference ceases
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Well, my book is written-let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me and they keep multiplying but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library-and a pen warmed up in hell.
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Not a single right is indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses not a single permanent right. God is Might (and He is shifty, malicious, and uncertain).
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Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people.
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Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent then he would have eaten the serpent.
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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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You may have noticed that the less I know about a subject the more confidence I have, and the more new light I throw on it.
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I am able to say that while I am not ruggedly well, I am not ill enough to excite an undertaker.
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If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such a sweat to get him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.
Mark Twain
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Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
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We called him Barney for short. We couldn't use his real name, there wasn't time.
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The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the tellingthe comic and the witty story upon the matter.
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Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues.
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