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There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.

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
Fine
Inspiration
Poor
Character
Howsoever
Good
Witless
Ridicule
Destroyed
Personality

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether. A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
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What is the chief end of man?-to get rich. In what way?-dishonestly if we can honestly if we must. Who is God, the one and only true? Money is God. Gold and Greenbacks and Stock-father, son, and ghosts of same, three persons in one These are the true and only God, mighty and supreme.
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When the Lord finished the world, he pronounced it good. That is what I said about my first work, too. But Time, I tell you, Time takes the confidence out of these incautious opinions. It is more than likely that He thinks about the world, now, pretty much as I think about the Innocents Abroad. The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.
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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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Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
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If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.
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First catch your Boer, then kick him.
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Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of growths
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Hunger is the handmaid of genius
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There was a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in.
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A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.
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Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.
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Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. You cannot eliminate habits that no longer serve you. You can only replace them with new habits that support your goals. Moment by moment, you need to live with awareness and structure the habits that you include or exclude in your days.
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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.
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We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can show off and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.
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Dying man couldn't make up his mind which place to go to-both have their advantages, heaven for the climate, hell for the company!
Mark Twain
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Teaching is like trying to hold 35 corks underwater at once.
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From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one -- to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF.
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To be, or not to be that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life.
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Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to good use.
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