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The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.

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
Lived
Worth
Wisdom
Living
May
Life
Unexamined
Examined
Closely

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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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The ancients stole all our ideas from us.
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God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
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Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.
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In God We Trust. It is the choicest compliment that has ever been paid us, and the most gratifying to our feelings. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased it always sounds well - In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true.
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When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
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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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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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In early times some sufferer had to sit up with a toothache, and he put in the time inventing the German language.
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The exquisitely bad is as satisfying to the soul as the exquisitely good. Only the mediocre is unendurable.
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We have to keep our God placated with prayer, and even then we are never sure of him-how much higher and finer is the Indian's God...Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact the Great Spirit is not all-powerful, but does the very best he can for his injun and does it free of charge
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In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.
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Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.
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More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the [biblical] texts that authorised them remain.
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Progressive improvement beats delayed perfection.
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...Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the 'noblest work of God.'
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You ought never to sass old people- unless they sass you first.
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Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.
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Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires constant effort, vigilance and reevaluation.
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We laugh and laugh. Then cry and cry- Then feebler laugh, Then die.
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