Quote

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

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
Sure
Customs
Sand
Punishment
Brings
Transgressed
Rock
Evaded
Laws
Escaped
Rocks
Openly
Law
Custom

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The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils, but give me the banjo.
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A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificiant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.
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Optimist: day-dreamer in his small clothes.
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When I was fourteen years old, I was amazed at how unintelligent my father was. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was astounded how much he had learned in the last seven years.
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...heaven for climate, and hell for society.
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On with the dance, let the joy be unconfined.
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Whenever a copyright law is to be made or altered, then the idiots assemble.
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Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress but I repeat myself.
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The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not.
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There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!
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The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
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I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.
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It takes me a long time to lose my temper, but once lost I could not find it with a dog.
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Men are like bank accounts. The more money, the more interest they generate.
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Now he found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.
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I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.
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These people´s God has shown them by a million acts that he respects none of the Bible´s statues. He breaks every one of them himself, adultery and all.
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At 50, a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass
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The Book of Mormon is chloroform in print
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Heaven is by favor if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.
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