Quote

When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?

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
Interest
Races
Individual
Peoples
Shams
Care
Tyranny
Tyrannies
Anything
Individuals
Conspire
Whole
Lies
Propagate
Told
Trifling
Race
Gigantic
Lying
Mute

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We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.
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I like the truth sometimes, but I don't care enough for it to hanker after it.
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Teaching is like trying to hold 35 corks underwater at once.
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I pledged myself to smoke but one cigar a day. I kept the cigar waiting until bedtime, then I had a luxurious time with it. But desire persecuted me every day and all day long. I found myself hunting for larger cigars...within the month my cigar had grown to such proportions I could have used it as a crutch.
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Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
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When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there- in sunny weather- stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose.
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By and by when each nation has 20,000 battleships and 5,000,000 soldiers we shall all be safe and the wisdom of statesmanship will stand confirmed.
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Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.
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There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
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A historian who would convey the truth has got to lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.
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Man seems to be a rickety poor sort of thing, any way you take him a kind of British Museum of infirmities and inferiorities. He is always undergoing repairs. A machine that was as unreliable as he is would have no market.
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We can't always have the beautiful aspect of things. Let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others go
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A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
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The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession-and take the credit of the correction.
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Alas! those good old days are gone, when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name and soothe his trouble to sleep simply by getting out his blocks and mortar and building an addition to a church.
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It is impossible that a genius - at least a literary genius - can ever be discovered by his intimates they are so close to him that he is out of focus to them and they can't get at his proportions they can't perceive that there is any considerable difference between his bulk and their own.
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Canadian girls are so pretty it's a relief now and then to see a plain one.
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It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.
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Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch.
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There is no other life life itself is only a vision and a dream for nothing exists but space and you. If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made all good, and no bad.
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