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There is not a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.

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
Labeled
Safely
Characteristic
Characteristics
Single
American
Human
Humans

More quotes by Mark Twain

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There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!
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I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.
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Well, my book is written-let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me and they keep multiplying but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library-and a pen warmed up in hell.
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Too much is just enough.
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Guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke.
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the size of a misfortune is not determinable by an outsider’s measurement of it but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it.
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Next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping. . . you'd see the ax flash and come down-you don't hear nothing you see the ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the k'chunk!-it had took all that time to come over the water.
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[The Bible is] a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology.
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Mark Twain
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Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwcp is pronounced Jackson.
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Nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of being hanged.
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The kingly office is entitled to no respect. It was originally procured by the highwayman's methods. It remains a perpetuated crime, can never be anything but the symbol of a crime. It is no more entitled to respect than is the flag of a pirate.
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The frankest and freest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter the writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing.
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I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
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Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself.
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Never be haughty to the humble, never be humble to the haughty.
Mark Twain
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One learns peoples through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.
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Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
Mark Twain
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Tough times teach trust.
Mark Twain
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A banker is somebody who lends you an umbrella & takes it away as soon as it starts raining.
Mark Twain