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

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

LOVE

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.
- Adam's Diary

Love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just comes--none knows whence--and cannot explain itself.
- Eve's Diary

Love is a madness; if thwarted it develops fast.
- "The Memorable Assassination"

The frankest and freest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter; the writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography, 1959 preface

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.
- Notebook, 1898

Olivia and Samuel Clemens on deck
during the Following the Equator tour.

Sam & Livy
Sam and Olivia Clemens

True love is the only heart disease that is best left to "run on"--the only affection of the heart for which there is no help, and none desired.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

The course of free love never runs smooth. I suppose we have all tried it.
- Notebook, 1904

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