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Not a single right is indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses not a single permanent right. God is Might (and He is shifty, malicious, and uncertain).

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
Men
Abolish
Time
Possesses
Hence
Uncertain
Permanent
Single
Shifty
Might
Malicious
Right
Indestructible

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When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.
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The physician who knows only medicine, knows not even medicine.
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Do not complain about growing old. It is a privilege denied to many.
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Twenty-four years ago I was strangely handsome in San Francisco in the rainy season I was often mistaken for fair weather.
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I have been cautioned to talk but be careful not to say anything. I do not consider this a difficult task.
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This is the year 1492. I am eighty-two years of age. The things I am going to tell you are things which I saw myself as a child and as a youth.
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He gossips habitually he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.
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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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It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.
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Make your vacation your vocation.
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Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.
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There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable report - the native novelist. ... And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people and not anywhere else can these be had.
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Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE
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We are all alike, on the inside.
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All say, ‘how hard it is that we have to die’ -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live.
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It is a shameful thing to insult a child.
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