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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.

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
Reader
Lying
Often
Truth
Able
Enlarge
Must
Convey
Would
Historian
Otherwise

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Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute.
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The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.
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Leaving out the gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement. If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would put their trust in The Health Board.
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I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
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The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend is immortal
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He had the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.
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What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows - it must grow nothing can prevent it.
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You try to tell me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.
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When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.
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A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows, and is just about as inspiring.
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There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle afer cycle, by force and bloodshed.
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We Americans worship the almighty dollar! Well, it is a worthier god than Heredity Privilege.
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A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty.
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Ethical man: A Christian holding four aces.
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There is no salvation for us but to adopt Civilization and lift ourselves down to its level.
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Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues.
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When an audience does not complain, it is a compliment, and when it does, it is a compliment, too, if unaccompanied by violence.
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Start it at no particular time of your life wander at your free will all over your life talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale.
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I can always tell which is the front end of a horse, but beyond that, my art is not above the ordinary.
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You can't reason with your heart it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
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