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The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness--your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture....He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher.

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
Writer
Pretension
Humor
Awaken
Week
Scorn
Takes
Preacher
Upon
Humorous
Love
Pity
Imposture
Kindness
Professes
Direct
Untruth

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Do good when you can, and charge when you think they will stand it.
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Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together!
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He was such a good man that people hated to see him coming.
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Most of the things I worried about in life never happened.
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The southerner talks music.
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God rewards gamblers and fools. The crucial thing, when you win, is knowing which you were.
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If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.
Mark Twain
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If all men were rich, all men would be poor.
Mark Twain
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A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.
Mark Twain
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The average American's simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak.
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There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.
Mark Twain
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In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
Mark Twain
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I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: Now here are these two unaccountable freaks they came in together, they must go out together.
Mark Twain
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Sometimes people do get hurt
Mark Twain
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A man who carries a cat by the tail is getting experience that will always be helpful. He isn't likely to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn't likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!
Mark Twain
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There's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for only just the right kind.
Mark Twain
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Truth is stranger than fiction-to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.
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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That cat will write her autograph all over your leg if you let her.
Mark Twain
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Your road is everything that a road ought to be...and yet you will not stay in it half a mile, for the reason that little, seductive, mysterious roads are always branching out from it on either hand, and as these curve sharply also and hide what is beyond, you cannot resist the temptation to desert your own chosen path and explore them.
Mark Twain