Quote

There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in an inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened civilized people.

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
Great
Beast
Finer
People
Wild
Barbarians
Civilization
Beasts
Difference
Stirring
Differences
Feeding
System
Parties
Party
Enlightened
Degraded
Feelings
Civilized
Inquisition

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Tis Better to Sit there and LOOK the fool, than to open your mouth and prove it.
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Man is a marvelous curiosity...he thinks he is the Creator's pet...he even believes the Creator loves him has passion for him sits up nights to admire him yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks he listens. Isn't it a quaint idea.
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It is not what a man knows, but what he thinks of in time.
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How empty is theory in the presence of fact!
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I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.
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You thunder and lightning too much the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.
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A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
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The frankest and freest and privatest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter.
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Germany, the diseased world's bathhouse.
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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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The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
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The higher animals get their teeth without pain or inconvenience. Man gets his through months and months of cruel torture he will never get a set which can really be depended on 'till a dentist makes him one.
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It isn't safe to sit in judgment upon another person's illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.
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Great enterprises usually promise vastly more than they perform.
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We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an interest in familiar things.
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It is the will of God that we must have critics and missionaries and congressmen and humorists, and we must bear the burden
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A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.
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My sister...was an interested and zealous invalid during sixty-five years, tried all the new diseases as fast as they came out, and always enjoyed the newest one more than any that went before my brother had accumulated forty-two brands of Christianity before he was called away.
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Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.
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The humorous story is told gravely the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.
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