Quote

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

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I will remark in the way of general information, that in California, that land of felicitous nomenclature, the literary name of this sort of stuff is hogwash
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If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.
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We need not worry so much about what man descends from it's what he descends to that shames the human race.
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More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the [biblical] texts that authorised them remain.
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But in this country we have one great privilege which they don't have in other countries. When a thing gets to be absolutely unbearable the people can rise up and throw it off. That's the finest asset we've got - the ballot box.
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Humor is man's greatest blessing.
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One compliment can keep me going for a whole month.
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It has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can.
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Education is what you must acquire without any interference from your schooling.
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If work were so pleasant, the rich would keep it for themselves.
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Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the pen and put them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside then all that ink and labor are wasted because I can't print the results
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It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.
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The southerner talks music.
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Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
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The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.
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Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to good use.
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Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
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By law of periodical repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again -- and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another's and each obeying its own law.
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The secret of getting ahead is getting started
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A woman springs a sudden reproach upon you which provokes a hot retort, and then she will presently ask you to apologize.
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