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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
Ridicule
Destroyed
Personality
Fine
Inspiration
Poor
Character
Howsoever
Good
Witless

More quotes by Mark Twain

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My sister...was an interested and zealous invalid during sixty-five years, tried all the new diseases as fast as they came out, and always enjoyed the newest one more than any that went before my brother had accumulated forty-two brands of Christianity before he was called away.
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A marriage. . .will give a new gladness to the sunshine, a new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth, and a new mystery to life.
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Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot and there ain't any real difference between triplets and a insurrection. - The Babies speech 1879
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Tis Better to Sit there and LOOK the fool, than to open your mouth and prove it.
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It is your human environment that makes climate
Mark Twain
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A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes when bad, he is entitled to none at all.
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We had an abundance of mangoes, papaias and bananas here, but the pride of the islands, the most delicious fruit known to men, cherimoya, was not in season. It has a soft pulp, like a pawpaw, and is eaten with a spoon.
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The new political gospel: public office is private graft.
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Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.
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Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.
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Being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time.
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Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened.
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A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows, and is just about as inspiring.
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The happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another.
Mark Twain
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Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people.
Mark Twain
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Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.
Mark Twain
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I have always been rather better treated in San Francisco than I actually deserved.
Mark Twain
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In forgiving, people are not being asked to forget. On the contrary, it is important to remember, so that we should not let such atrocities happen again. Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously...drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens our entire existence.
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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.
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I have damaged my intellect trying to imagine why a man should want to invent a repeating clock, and how another man could be found to lust after it and buy it. The man who can guess these riddles is far on the way to guess why the human race was invented - which is another riddle which tires me.
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