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

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In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
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But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie.
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Worrying is paying interest on a debt you might not even owe.
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Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened.
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There was a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in.
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At noon I observed a bevy of nude young native women bathing in the sea, and I went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen.
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The law is a system that protects everybody who can afford to hire a good lawyer.
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Among other common lies, we have the silent lie - the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.
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Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds.
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Only he who has seen better days and lives to see better days again knows their full value.
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Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.
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Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher than kings hath done that for thee but a king can confirm thy nobility to men.
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
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No one can tell me what is a good cigar - for me. I am the only judge. People who claim to know say that I smoke the worst cigars in the world. They bring their own cigars when they come to my house.
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A man may have no bad habits and have worse
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Too much is just enough.
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Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
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My mind changes often ... People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo.
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He wa'n't no common dog, he wa'n't no mongrel he was a composite. A composite dog is a dog that is made up of all the valuable qualities that's in the dog breed-kind of a syndicate and a mongrel is made up of all riffraff that's left over.
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It is so unsatisfactory to read a noble passage and have no one you love at hand to share the happiness with you. And it is unsatisfactory to read to one's self anyhow - for the uttered voice so heightens the expression.
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