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The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.

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
Miracle
Exactly
Difference
Differences
Fact
Facts
Mermaid
Seal
Seals

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Behold, the fool saith, Put not all thine eggs in the one basket - which is but a matter of saying, Scatter your money and your attention but the wise man saith, Pull all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET. - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
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A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you than the ninety-and -nine which you had to work for, and money won at faro or in stock snuggles into your heart in the same way.
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What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows - it must grow nothing can prevent it.
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The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.
Mark Twain
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[On Dutch flat poetry]: It is too smooth and blubbery it reads like butter-milk gurgling from a jug.
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Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.
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Concentration of power in a political machine is bad and an Established Church is only a political machine it was invented for that it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition.
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In love, you pay as you leave.
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There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
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The low level which commercial morality has reached in America is deplorable. We have humble God fearing Christian men among us who will stoop to do things for a million dollars that they ought not to be willing to do for less than 2 millions.
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There are some natures which never grow large enough to speak out and say a bad act is a bad act, until they have inquired into the politics or the nationality of the man who did it.
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.
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None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness but we can try.
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Wherefore being all of one mind, we do highly resolve that government of the grafted by the grafter for the grafter shall not perish from the earth.
Mark Twain
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There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency - and a virtue, and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency - and a vice.
Mark Twain
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We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.
Mark Twain
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When I was fourteen years old, I was amazed at how unintelligent my father was. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was astounded how much he had learned in the last seven years.
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What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one's self-approval.
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Leaving out the gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement. If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would put their trust in The Health Board.
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If all men were rich, all men would be poor.
Mark Twain