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Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth

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
Ever
Expensive
Kind
Safe
Inspiration
Democracy
Heard
Rich
Earth
Nefarious
Government
Afford

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A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by.
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All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth--including America, of course-- consist of pilferings from other people's wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty occupies a foot of land that was not stolen.
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If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.
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You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.
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Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
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There are no accidents, all things have a deep and calculated purpose sometimes the methods employed by Providence seem strange and incongruous, but we have only to be patient and wait for the result: then we recognize that no others would have answered the purpose, and we are rebuked and humbled.
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Additional problems are the offspring of poor solutions.
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Manifestly, dying is nothing to a really great and brave man.
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Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by.
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The very marks on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy.
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Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights...sexual intercourse!...His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.
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When a man's dog turns against hime, it is time for his wife to pack her trunk and go home to mamma.
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As a boy, I once saw a cart of melons that sorely tempted me. I sneaked up to the cart and stole a melon. I went into the alley to devour it, but no sooner had I set my teeth into it, than I paused, a strange feeling coming over me. I came to a quick conclusion. Firmly, I walked up to that cart, replaced the melon - and took a ripe one.
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To believe yourself brave is to be brave it is the one only essential thing.
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I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
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Man proposes, but God blocks the game.
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Too bad that youth is wasted on the young.
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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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There is no family in America without a clock, and consequently there is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday medley of dreadful sounds that issues from our steeples.
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They do say that when a man starts down hill everybody is ready to help him with a kick, and I suppose it is so.
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