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He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

— Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)

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More quotes by Mark Twain

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

Biographies are but clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mark Twain (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.