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I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

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
Humorous
Letters
Humorists
Written
Brevity
Funny
Shorter
Would
Publishers
Time
Ironic
Letter
Entrepreneur

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven & hell & I have only a vague curiosity about one of those.
Mark Twain
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By and by when each nation has 20,000 battleships and 5,000,000 soldiers we shall all be safe and the wisdom of statesmanship will stand confirmed.
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when we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.
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It is not in the least likely that any life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgment of the person who lived it.
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Until I came to New Mexico, I never realized how much beauty water adds to a river.
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Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.
Mark Twain
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Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.
Mark Twain
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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.
Mark Twain
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A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
Mark Twain
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A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
Mark Twain
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One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.
Mark Twain
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Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.
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A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
Mark Twain
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I don't believe there is anything in the whole earth that you can't learn in Berlin except the German language.
Mark Twain
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Shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?
Mark Twain
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Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other. It will unriddle many riddles
Mark Twain
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There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Mark Twain
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Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
Mark Twain
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If you're looking for friends when you need them...it's too late.
Mark Twain
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Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'
Mark Twain