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I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me. But when they descend to telling the truth about me I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage.

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
Long
Unfair
Mind
Opposition
Consider
Telling
Advantage
Taking
Tell
Truth
Descend

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Men are like bank accounts. The more money, the more interest they generate.
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The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession-and take the credit of the correction.
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Of the 417 commandments, only a single one of the 417 has found ministerial obedience multiply and replenish the earth. To it sinner & saint, scholar & ignoramus, Christian & savage are alike loyal.
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I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church. They can't be made to do it in any possible way.
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Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent then he would have eaten the serpent.
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When I want to read something nice, I sit down and write it myself.
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The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow.
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Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we can enjoy theirs. It is not strange for tastes are made, not born. I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired but after all, the Scotchman would shake his head and say, 'Where's your haggis?' and the Fijan would sigh and say, 'Where's your missionary?'
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Seasickness: at first you are so sick you are afraid you will die, and then you are so sick you are afraid you won't die.
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Let your secret sympathies and your compassion be always with the under dog in the fight -- this is magnanimity but bet on the other one -- this is business.
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It must be well-nigh a maximum of sense to behave so that one escapes being hanged.
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Let us guess that whenever we read a sentence & like it, we unconsciously store it away in our model-chamber & it goes, with the myriad of its fellows, to the building, brick by brick, of the eventual edifice which we call our style.
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We have to keep our God placated with prayer, and even then we are never sure of him-how much higher and finer is the Indian's God...Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact the Great Spirit is not all-powerful, but does the very best he can for his injun and does it free of charge
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Among other common lies, we have the silent lie - the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.
Mark Twain
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Whenever the human race assembles to a number exceeding four, it cannot stand free speech.
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Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities Truth isn't.
Mark Twain
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When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
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Teaching is like trying to hold 35 corks underwater at once.
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The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name right.
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To write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers pay within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.
Mark Twain