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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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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
Even
Story
Dimly
Fact
Teller
Funny
Conceal
Facts
Suspects
Stories
Crafts
Doe
Humorous
Anything
Humor
Best
Told
Gravely

More quotes by Mark Twain

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I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way.
Mark Twain
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April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
Mark Twain
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Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first! Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain
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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
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God could create the world in six days because he didn't have to make it compatible with the previous version. Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company
Mark Twain
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And so when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.
Mark Twain
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Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain
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Methuselah lived to be 969 years old . You boys and girls will see more in the next fifty years than Methuselah saw in his whole lifetime.
Mark Twain
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If God had meant for us to be naked, we'd have been born that way.
Mark Twain
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Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
Mark Twain
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Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.
Mark Twain
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To gnaw on is human, towards digest, divine.
Mark Twain
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Two things seemed pretty apparent to me. One was that in order to be a pilot a man had to learn more than any one man ought to learn and the other was that he must learn it all over again in a different way every 24 hours.
Mark Twain
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Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.
Mark Twain
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When a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me.
Mark Twain
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Blasphemy? No, it is not blashphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy if he is as little as that, He is beneath it.
Mark Twain
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I felt it was my duty to praise all of God's works with fervent enthusiasm. At the same time I killed flies in my house in a spirit of hatred, exasperation and contempt. My praise to God for all his works was dishonest, the act of killing the fly was honest.
Mark Twain
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Let your secret sympathies and your compassion be always with the under dog in the fight -- this is magnanimity but bet on the other one -- this is business.
Mark Twain
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Morals are not the important thing-nor enlightenment-nor civilization. A man can do absolutely well without them, but he can't do without something to eat. The supremest thing is the need of the body, not of the mind and spirit.
Mark Twain
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There will never be a perfect time to quit smoking. A time when you don't have any distractions or stress... If you had started today one year ago, this would not even be an issue for you today! Don't waste another year!
Mark Twain