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Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

"Mark Twain's Speeches"


I have a great respect for the English language. I am one of its
supporters, its promoters, its elevators. I don't degrade it. A slip of
the tongue would be the most that you would get from me. I have always
tried hard and faithfully to improve my English and never to degrade it.
I always try to use the best English to describe what I think and what I
feel, or what I don't feel and what I don't think.
I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to
facts. I don't know anything that mars good literature so completely as
too much truth. Facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can't use too
many of them without damaging your literature. I love all literature,
and as long as I am a doctor of literature--I have suggested to you for
twenty years I have been diligently trying to improve my own literature,
and now, by virtue of the University of Oxford, I mean to doctor
everybody else's.
Now I think I ought to apologize for my clothes. At home I venture
things that I am not permitted by my family to venture in foreign parts.
I was instructed before I left home and ordered to refrain from white
clothes in England.


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