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It's an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

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
Half
Epitome
Enjoy
Consists
Firsts
Birthday
Without
Enjoyment
First
Capacity
Life
Chance
Lasts
Last

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Progressive improvement beats delayed perfection.
Mark Twain
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If God is what people say there can be no one in the universe so unhappy as He for He sees unceasingly myriads of His creatures suffering unspeakable miseries--and besides this foresees how they are going to suffer during the remainder of their lives. One might as well say, As unhappy as God.
Mark Twain
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When you feel like tellin a feller to go to the devil - tell him to go to Chicago - it'll anser every purpose, and is perhaps, a leetle more expensive.
Mark Twain
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When an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence.
Mark Twain
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I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.
Mark Twain
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Many public-school children seem to know only two dates—1492 and 4th of July and as a rule they don't know what happened on either occasion.
Mark Twain
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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?'
Mark Twain
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Marriage -- yes, it is the supreme felicity of life. I concede it. And it is also the supreme tragedy of life. The deeper the love the surer the tragedy. And the more disconsolating when it comes.
Mark Twain
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How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!
Mark Twain
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Experience teaches us only one thing at a time - and hardly that, in my case.
Mark Twain
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The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
Mark Twain
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Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
Mark Twain
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We Americans are the most lavish and showiest and most luxury loving people on the earth and at our masthead we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever seen.
Mark Twain
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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
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Methuselah lived to be 969 years old . You boys and girls will see more in the next fifty years than Methuselah saw in his whole lifetime.
Mark Twain
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Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Mark Twain
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I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.
Mark Twain
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There isn't anything you can't stand if you are only born and bred to it.
Mark Twain
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Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.
Mark Twain
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Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Mark Twain