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Happy 176th Birthday Mark Twain!
Wit and Humor--if any difference it is in duration--lightning and electric light. Same material, apparently; but one is vivid, brief, and can do damage--the other fools along and enjoys the elaboration.
--Mark Twain's Notebook
This nation is like all the others that have been spewed upon the earth--ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!
--Letter to J. H. Twichell, 1/29/1901
It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many can successfully resist. What is its seat? The inborn requirement of self-approval.
--"Corn Pone Opinions"
Once I talked to the inmates of an insane asylum in Hartford. I have talked to idiots a thousand times, but only once to the insane...
--quoted in Isabel Lyon's Journal, 2/15/1906
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