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I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

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
Letters
Short
Instead
Write
Didn
Writing
Long
Letter
Time
Wrote

More quotes by Mark Twain

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The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label.
Mark Twain
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Newport, Rhode Island, that breeding place-that stud farm, so to speak-of aristocracy aristocracy of the American type.
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Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe and examine.
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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.
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It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.
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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
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No one is willing to acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive can be found for the estrangement of his acquaintances.
Mark Twain
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It shames the average man to be valued below his own estimate of his worth.
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The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward.
Mark Twain
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Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.
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.
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He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
Mark Twain
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You cannot have all chiefs you gotta have Indians too. Perfect love cannot be without equality. A friend to everybody and to nobody is the same thing. We are all alike, on the inside.
Mark Twain
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You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain
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If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.
Mark Twain
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Such is luck! And such the treatment which honest, good perservance gets so often at the hands of unfair and malicious Nature!
Mark Twain
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What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.
Mark Twain
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Training- training is everything training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature it is folly there is no such thing as nature what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own they are transmitted to us, trained into us.
Mark Twain
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Experience teaches us only one thing at a time - and hardly that, in my case.
Mark Twain
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Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Mark Twain