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

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Those who say truth is stranger than fiction have wasted their time on poorly written fiction.
Mark Twain
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The only people who should use the possessive 'we' are kings, newspaper editors, and persons with tapeworms.
Mark Twain
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They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are gettin' ready to prove that a man's heirs ain't got any right to his property.
Mark Twain
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If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such a sweat to get him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.
Mark Twain
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I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die.
Mark Twain
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Most of the things I worried about in life never happened.
Mark Twain
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Drop this mean and sordid and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up something to do that's got some dignity to it! Risk your souls! Risk them in good causes then if you lose them, why should you care? Reform!
Mark Twain
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Alas! those good old days are gone, when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name and soothe his trouble to sleep simply by getting out his blocks and mortar and building an addition to a church.
Mark Twain
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We need not worry so much about what man descends from it's what he descends to that shames the human race.
Mark Twain
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Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
Mark Twain
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Genius has no youth, but starts with the ripeness of age and old experience.
Mark Twain
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Man is without doubt the most interesting fool there is. He concedes that God made the angels immune from pain and death, and that he could have been similarly kind to man, but denies that he was under any moral obligation to do so.
Mark Twain
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More than once I have been humiliated by my resemblance to God the father He is always longing for the love of His children and trying to get it on the cheapest and laziest terms He can invent.
Mark Twain
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The Mississippi River will always have its own way no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise.
Mark Twain
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But it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it.
Mark Twain
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Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live. To live a fulfilled life, we need to keep creating the what is next, of our lives. Without dreams and goals there is no living, only merely existing, and that is not why we are here.
Mark Twain
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Additional problems are the offspring of poor solutions.
Mark Twain
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I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, and it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.
Mark Twain
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When congress is in session no American is safe.
Mark Twain
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The southerner talks music.
Mark Twain