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Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

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
Written
Cannot
Biographers
Men
Biography
Biographies
Buttons
Clothes
Fashion
Inspiration

More quotes by Mark Twain

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There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable report - the native novelist. ... And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people and not anywhere else can these be had.
Mark Twain
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Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
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English humor is hard to appreciate, though, unless you are trained to it. The English papers, in reporting my speeches, always put 'laughter' in the wrong place.
Mark Twain
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To be good is noble but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
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Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.
Mark Twain
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The humorous story is told gravely the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.
Mark Twain
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Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
Mark Twain
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The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils, but give me the banjo.
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Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
Mark Twain
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Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Mark Twain
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Politicians, old buildings, and prostitutes become respectable with age.
Mark Twain
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Choosing not to read is like closing an open door to paradise
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The new political gospel: public office is private graft.
Mark Twain
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Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.
Mark Twain
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The old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a man's pocket, because it cut down the doctor's bills like everything.
Mark Twain
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It is your human environment that makes climate
Mark Twain
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The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.
Mark Twain
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It's not the parts of the Bible I don't know that worries me...it's the parts that I do.
Mark Twain
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Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon.
Mark Twain
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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