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The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
-Mark Twain
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We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in itand stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid againand that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
-Mark Twain
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The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large mattertis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.
-Mark Twain
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Say the report is exaggerated.
-Mark Twain
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A jay hasnt got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise.
-Mark Twain
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To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman.
-Mark Twain
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I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
-Mark Twain
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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.
-Mark Twain
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When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victorymust follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battlebe Thou near them! With themin spiritwe also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with anavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied itfor our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
-Mark Twain
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The teacher reminded us that Romes liberties were not auctioned off in a day, but were bought slowly, gradually, furtively, little by little; first with a little corn and oil for the exceedingly poor and wretched, later with corn and oil for voters who were not quite so poor, later still with corn and oil for pretty much every man that had a vote to sellexactly our own history over again.
-Mark Twain
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By his father he is English, by his mother he is Americanto my mind the blend which makes the perfect man.
-Mark Twain
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So I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it but I couldnt find honest employment.
-Mark Twain
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Action(s)
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Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
-Mark Twain
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Adversity
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By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
-Mark Twain
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Advertising
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Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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Age
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I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.
-Mark Twain
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Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
-Mark Twain
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Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
-Mark Twain
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Methuselah lived to be 969 years old . You boys and girls will see more in the next fifty years than Methuselah saw in his whole lifetime.
-Mark Twain
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The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes.
-Mark Twain
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When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.
-Mark Twain
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Agreement
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What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one's self-approval.
-Mark Twain
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Alcohol/Alcoholism
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Sometimes too much drink is barely enough.
-Mark Twain
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Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.
-Mark Twain
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Ambition
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Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
-Mark Twain
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Books by and about Mark Twain