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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
Single
American
Human
Humans
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Characteristics

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.
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?'
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But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of therest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.
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You can never find a Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this saving knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient 'people say.'
Mark Twain
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All good things arrive unto them that wait - and don't die in the meantime.
Mark Twain
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Sum all the gifts that man is endowed with, and we give our greatest share of admiration to his energy. And today, if I were a heathen, I would rear a statue to Energy and fall down and worship it!
Mark Twain
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The old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a man's pocket, because it cut down the doctor's bills like everything.
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None but the dead have free speech.
Mark Twain
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More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.
Mark Twain
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To be great, truly great, you have to be the kind of person who makes the others around you great.
Mark Twain
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Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.
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Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.
Mark Twain
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I will remark in the way of general information, that in California, that land of felicitous nomenclature, the literary name of this sort of stuff is hogwash
Mark Twain
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Two days overdue, THE WORLD'S WORK has not reached me. Pray make a note of this. I would rather not have to resort to violence.
Mark Twain
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I bring you this stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Phillipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass.
Mark Twain
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We recognize that there are no trivial occurrences in life if we get the right focus on them.
Mark Twain
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Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.
Mark Twain
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Why is it that, among men, physical courage is a trait so plenteous yet moral courage is a trait so rare?
Mark Twain
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The Mississippi River will always have its own way no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise.
Mark Twain
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Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind it if you want to see it.
Mark Twain