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

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JOURNAL

If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.
- The Innocents Abroad

AI image created by R. Kent Rasmussen

At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for duty's sake, and invincible determination, may hope to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat.
- The Innocents Abroad


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