Quote

The pause - that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, howsoever felicitous, could accomplish 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
Silence
Pause
Achieve
Pauses
Words
Impressive
Geometrically
Often
Progressive
Felicitous
Combination
Howsoever
Accomplish
Achieves
Effect
Eloquent
Effects
Desired

More quotes by Mark Twain

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I don't know anything about this man. Anyhow, I only know two things about him. One is, he has never been in jail, and the other is, I don't know why.
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All my life I have been honest-comparatively honest. I could never use money I had not made honestly-I could only lend it.
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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.
Mark Twain
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I like criticism, but it must be my way.
Mark Twain
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The vast majority of the race whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind at heart and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves.
Mark Twain
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Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
Mark Twain
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What a lumbering poor vehicle prose is for the conveying of a great thought! ... Prose wanders around with a lantern & laboriously schedules & verifies the details & particulars of a valley & its frame of crags & peaks, then Poetry comes, & lays bare the whole landscape with a single splendid flash.
Mark Twain
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There is this trouble about special providences namely, there is so often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. In the case of the children, the bears, and the prophet, the bears got more real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they got the children.
Mark Twain
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I hope all of us may eventually be together in everlasting peace and bliss -- except the inventor of the # telephone .
Mark Twain
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To be great, truly great, you have to be the kind of person who makes the others around you great.
Mark Twain
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All men are ignorant, just on different subjects.
Mark Twain
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Circumstance - which moves by laws of its own, regardless of parties and policies, and whose decrees are final and must be obeyed by all - and will be
Mark Twain
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Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Mark Twain
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Go and surprise the whole country by doing something right.
Mark Twain
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I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.
Mark Twain
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Cats are the wildest of the tame and the tamest of the wild
Mark Twain
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A little more kindness, A little less speed, A little more giving, A little less greed, A little more smile, A little less frown, A little less kicking, A man while he's down, A little more We, A little less I, A little more laugh, A little less cry, A little more flowers, On the pathway of life, And fewer on graves, At the end of the stri
Mark Twain
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You can't make a life over. Society wouldn't let you if you would.
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When someone dies, it is like when your house burns down it isn't for years that you realize the full extent of your loss.
Mark Twain
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Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.
Mark Twain