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When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.

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
Giving
Apart
Mean
Valuable
Writing
Kill
Fluff
Close
Adjective
Strength
Weaken
Rest
Adjectives
Give
Utterly
Together
Catch

More quotes by Mark Twain

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I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion.
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I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic ... something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
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There are no accidents, all things have a deep and calculated purpose sometimes the methods employed by Providence seem strange and incongruous, but we have only to be patient and wait for the result: then we recognize that no others would have answered the purpose, and we are rebuked and humbled.
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A banquet is probably the most fatiguing thing in the world except ditchdigging. It is the insanest of all recreations. The inventor of it overlooked no detail that could furnish weariness, distress, harassment, and acute and long-sustained misery of mind and body.
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What's the use you learning to do right , when it's troublesome to do right and it ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?
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Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual harmonious development, its culminating graces-and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train.
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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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The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label.
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The only very marked difference between the average civilized man and the average savage is that the one is gilded and the other is painted.
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There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers after the Truth-have you ever heard of a permanent one?
Mark Twain
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Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?
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The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn't detect.
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We like to read about rich people in the newspapers the papers know it, and they do their best to keep this appetite liberally fed.
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The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a person only tells them with all his might.
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To stand still is to fall behind.
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One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a beautiful woman is after considerable acquaintance with her.
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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.
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I have at last, after several months' experience, made up my mind that [New York] is a splendid desert--a domed and steepled solitude, where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race.
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The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.
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The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next.
Mark Twain