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

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KINGS

...there is nothing diviner about a king than there is about a tramp, after all. He is just a cheap and hollow artificiality when you don't know he is a king. But reveal his quality, and dear me, it takes your breath away to look at him. I reckon we are all fools. Born so, no doubt.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Clemens with King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra at a Windsor garden party.
Illustrated London News, June 29, 1907 from the Dave Thomson collection.

Kings is mostly rapscallions.
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Monarchs are usurpers and descendants of usurpers; for the reason that no throne was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised, of the only body possessing the legitimate right to set it up- the numerical mass of the nation.
- Letter to Sylvester Baxter, 1889

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