Quote

Humor, to be comprehensible to anybody, must be built upon a foundation with which he is familiar. If he can't see the foundation the superstructure is to him merely a freak -- like the Flatiron building without any visible means of support -- something that ought to be arrested.

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
Without
Anybody
Superstructure
Must
Built
Comprehensible
Humor
Arrested
Mean
Building
Freak
Something
Ought
Visible
Like
Support
Familiar
Upon
Merely
Means
Foundation

More quotes by Mark Twain

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There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers after the Truth-have you ever heard of a permanent one?
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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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The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.
Mark Twain
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The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next.
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The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.
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It's easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them.
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It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened.
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It is my custom to keep on talking until I get the audience cowed.
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In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
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How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man while he sleeps!
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To be good is noble but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
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Training- training is everything training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature it is folly there is no such thing as nature what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own they are transmitted to us, trained into us.
Mark Twain
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Good exercise for the heart: reach out and help your neighbor
Mark Twain
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But we are all insane, anyway ... The suicides seem to be the only sane people.
Mark Twain
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If I were going to construct a God I would furnish him with some ways and qualities and characteristics which the Present One lacks... He would spend some of His eternities in trying to forgive Himself for making man unhappy when He could have made him happy with the same effort and He would spend the rest of them in studying astronomy.
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The introduction of homeopathy forced the old school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business. You may honestly feel grateful that homeopathy survived the attempts of the allopaths to destroy it.
Mark Twain
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I do not allow my schooling to interfere with my education
Mark Twain
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Creed and opinion change with time, and their symbols perish but Literature and its temples are sacred to all creeds and inviolate.
Mark Twain
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But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie.
Mark Twain
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When in doubt tell the truth.
Mark Twain