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We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.

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
Talent
Always
Praised
Distinguished
Fifteen
Anxious
Possess
Musical
Praise

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When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.
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The difference between those that succeed and those that fail is, those that succeeded tried.
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Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.
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Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.
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God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
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We don't cut up when mad men are bred by the old legitimate regular stock religions, but we can't allow wildcat religions to indulge in such disastrous experiments.
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I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out of all proportion to the European experience.
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Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.
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Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon.
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What is the chief end of man?-to get rich. In what way?-dishonestly if we can honestly if we must. Who is God, the one and only true? Money is God. Gold and Greenbacks and Stock-father, son, and ghosts of same, three persons in one These are the true and only God, mighty and supreme.
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In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.
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Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval - a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death.
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In God We Trust. It is the choicest compliment that has ever been paid us, and the most gratifying to our feelings. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased it always sounds well - In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true.
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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.
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The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name right.
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Among other common lies, we have the silent lie - the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.
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Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was alive. I wish they were used more.
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The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
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In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch.
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We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.
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