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My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses and hypocrisies.

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
Poor
Cruelties
Idea
Meanness
Ideas
Hypocrisy
Thing
Arrogance
Cruelty
Vanity
Hypocrisies
Civilization
Shoddy
Full
Vanities

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I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me. But when they descend to telling the truth about me I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage.
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Probably there is an imperceptible touch of something permanent that one feels instinctively to adhere to true humour, whereas wit may be the mere conversational shooting up of smartness--a bright feather, to be blown into space the second after it is launched...Wit seems to be counted a very poor relation to Humour....Humour is never artifici
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I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.
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Prediction is difficult- particularly when it involves the future.
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An American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans.
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Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
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If you want to change the future, you must change what you're doing in the present.
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A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
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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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We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
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Wisdom teaches us that none but birds should go out early, and that not even birds should do it unless they are out of worms.
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Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
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Shut the door not that it lets in the cold but that it lets out the coziness.
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You want to be very careful about lying otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught.
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The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, Where is the best place to go to? He was undecided about it. So the minister told him that each place had its advantages--heaven for climate, and hell for society.
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I could be an idiot, or I can serve in Congress, but I repeat myself.
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Experience comes from bad judgment.
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