Quote

To write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers pay within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.

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
Without
Nobody
Wood
Looks
Somebody
Intended
Writing
Within
Candidates
Years
Upon
Woods
Write
Sign
Sawing
Three
Offers
Implicit
May
Confidence
Circumstance
Look
Pay
Candidate

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the state die? Oh, no.
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Twenty-four years ago I was strangely handsome in San Francisco in the rainy season I was often mistaken for fair weather.
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One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare
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This autobiography of mine is a mirror, and I am looking at myself in it all the time. Incidentally I notice the people that pass along at my back - I get glimpses of them in the mirror - and whenever they say or do anything that can help advertise me and flatter me and raise me in my own estimation, I set these things down in my autobiography.
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In all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience money.
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If a spectacle is going to be particularly imposing I prefer to see it through somebody else's eyes, because that man will always exaggerate. Then I can exaggerate his exaggeration, and my account of the thing will be the most impressive.
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The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the tellingthe comic and the witty story upon the matter.
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We never knew an ignorant person yet but was prejudiced.
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How empty is theory in the presence of fact!
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We have to keep our God placated with prayer, and even then we are never sure of him-how much higher and finer is the Indian's God...Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact the Great Spirit is not all-powerful, but does the very best he can for his injun and does it free of charge
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I like the truth sometimes, but I don't care enough for it to hanker after it.
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What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
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If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.
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High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water but everybody likes water.
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One must keep one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and if you can't, then assume one.
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Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?
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Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind it if you want to see it.
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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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An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.
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He gossips habitually he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.
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