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There are two things nobody should ever have to watch being made, sausage and laws.

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
Watches
Watch
Nobody
Law
Two
Ever
Made
Sausage
Things
Laws

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What a lumbering poor vehicle prose is for the conveying of a great thought! ... Prose wanders around with a lantern & laboriously schedules & verifies the details & particulars of a valley & its frame of crags & peaks, then Poetry comes, & lays bare the whole landscape with a single splendid flash.
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I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome variety is pleasing.
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I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.
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Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.
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The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.
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Every citizen of the republic ought to consider himself an unofficial policeman, and keep unsalaried watch and ward over the laws and their execution.
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I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way.
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It is hard enough luck being a monarch, without being a target also.
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Does the human being reason? No he thinks, muses, reflects, but does not reason...that is, in the two things which are the peculiar domain of the heart, not the mind, politics and religion. He doesn't want to know the other side. He wants arguments and statistics for his own side, and nothing more.
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the size of a misfortune is not determinable by an outsider’s measurement of it but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it.
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To believe yourself brave is to be brave it is the one only essential thing.
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We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it's efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read-
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Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.
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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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The old Irish when immersing a babe at baptism left out the right arm so that it would remain pagan for good fighting
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To write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers pay within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.
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One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a beautiful woman is after considerable acquaintance with her.
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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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Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we can enjoy theirs. It is not strange for tastes are made, not born. I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired but after all, the Scotchman would shake his head and say, 'Where's your haggis?' and the Fijan would sigh and say, 'Where's your missionary?'
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Data is like garbage. You'd better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.
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