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

More quotes by Mark Twain

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I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
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There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
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A pessimist is a well-informed optimist.
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The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.
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Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
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The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
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...there isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting.
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Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.
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I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
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Human Beings are the only animals that blush, or need to.
Mark Twain
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'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
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Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest you want them all to land in hell together, and right away.
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Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
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The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend is immortal
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If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time.
Mark Twain
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It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
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Good wine needs no bush a jug is the thing.
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It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.
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Modesty antedates clothes and will be resumed when clothes are no more.
Mark Twain
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I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.
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