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As a rule we develop a borrowed European idea forward, and ... Europe develops a borrowed American idea backwards.

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
Rule
Forward
Europe
American
Develops
Idea
Borrowed
Ideas
Backwards
European
Develop

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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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We are strange beings, we seem to go free, but we go in chains - chains of training, custom, convention, association, environment - in a word, Circumstance, and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain.
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Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.
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It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened.
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Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe and examine.
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Whiskey is for drinking water is for fighting over.
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Principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.
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These are the true and only God, mighty and supreme.
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Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together!
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I ordinarily smoke fifteen cigars during my five hours' labours, and if my interest reaches the enthusiastic point, I smoke more. I smoke with all my might, and allow no intervals.
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The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name right.
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The pause - that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, howsoever felicitous, could accomplish it.
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