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Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.

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
Cannot
Humorists
Decoration
Fragrance
Survive
Mere
Humor
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More quotes by Mark Twain

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Do your duty today and repent tomorrow.
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Truth is stranger than fiction-to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.
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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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Sagebrush is a very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his illegitimate child the mule.
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There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.
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Genius has no youth, but starts with the ripeness of age and old experience.
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I was educated, I was trained, I was a Presbyterian and I knew how these things are done. I knew that in Biblical times if a man committed a sin the extermination of the whole surrounding nation-cattle and all-was likely to happen. I knew that Providence was not particular about the rest, so that He got somebody connected with the one He was after.
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Every man has a secret ambition: To outsmart horses, fish and women.
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God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
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What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one's self-approval.
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A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
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Benefit of clergy: Half-rate on the railroad.
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In religion and politics, people's belief's and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination
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The truth hurts, but silence kills.
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When an audience does not complain, it is a compliment, and when it does, it is a compliment, too, if unaccompanied by violence.
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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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To be, or not to be that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life.
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The best of us would rather be popular than right.
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I have been on the verge of being an angel all my life, but it's never happened yet.
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Everybody lies...every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception.
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