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Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Mark Twain
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Mark Twain
Age: 74 †
Born: 1835
Born: November 30
Died: 1910
Died: April 21
Aphorist
Author
Autobiographer
Humorist
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Teacher
Florida
Missouri
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Samuel L. Clemens
Samuel Clemens
Work
Obliged
Consists
Yoga
Motivational
Inspiration
Whatever
Body
Playtime
Play
Sawyer
More quotes by Mark Twain
The cigar-box which the European calls a 'lift' needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like a man's patent purge-it works.
Mark Twain
There was a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in.
Mark Twain
There's some human instinct which makes a man treasure what he is not to make any use of, because everybody does not possess it.
Mark Twain
A jay hasnt got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise.
Mark Twain
Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, apparently. What supports its poverty-stricken people or its Government, is a mystery.
Mark Twain
It were not best that we should all think alike.
Mark Twain
Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full of regrets that Michelangelo died but by and by, you only regret that you didn't see him do it.
Mark Twain
There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.
Mark Twain
I like criticism, but it must be my way.
Mark Twain
We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an interest in familiar things.
Mark Twain
Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.
Mark Twain
I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.
Mark Twain
France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals. France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France.
Mark Twain
You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.
Mark Twain
Tea is an affront to lunch and an insult to dinner.
Mark Twain
If a spectacle is going to be particularly imposing I prefer to see it through somebody else's eyes, because that man will always exaggerate. Then I can exaggerate his exaggeration, and my account of the thing will be the most impressive.
Mark Twain
We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can show off and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.
Mark Twain
Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'
Mark Twain
Jim said that bees won't sting idiots, but I didn't believe that, because I tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn't sting me.
Mark Twain
We have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries it is only when we set out to discover the secret of God that our difficulties disappear.
Mark Twain
