Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:

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PAST

For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment - Mark Twain and I, Opie Read I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering and that was the fact that it is past -- can't be restored. - Letter to Jacob H. Burrough, 1 November 1876

We steeped our thirsty souls in the reviving wine of the past, the pathetic past, the beautiful past, the dear and lamented past; we uttered the names that had been silent upon our lips for fifty years, and it was as if they were made of music; with reverent hands we unburied our dead, the mates of our youth, and caressed them with our speech; we searched the dusty chambers of our memories and dragged forth incident after incident, episode after episode, folly after folly, and laughed such good laughs over them, with the tears running down ...
- Autobiography of Mark Twain (University of California Press, 2010)

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