Quote

In India, 'cold weather' is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.

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
Doors
Sarcastic
Cold
Conventional
Mushy
Inspiration
Phrases
Knob
Use
Necessity
Knobs
Come
Weather
Brass
Way
India
Melt
Make
Merely
Distinguish
Door
Phrase

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You can't reason with your heart it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
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It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.
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The only people that a bank will loan money to is the very people who don't need it.
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We don't cut up when mad men are bred by the old legitimate regular stock religions, but we can't allow wildcat religions to indulge in such disastrous experiments.
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To be good is noble but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
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Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
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If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.
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If you take epitaphs seriously, we ought to bury the living and resurrect the dead.
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Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwcp is pronounced Jackson.
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Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, political, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies.
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When a man arrives at great prosperity God did it: when he falls into disaster he did it himself.
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The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
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Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.
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[I] shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes. Indeed, upon second thought, I will not use it then, for it is unchristian, inelegant, and degrading--though to speak truly I do not see how house rent and taxes are going to be discussed worth a cent without it.
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The proverb says, Born lucky, always lucky, and I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.
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It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.
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Whenever a copyright law is to be made or altered, then the idiots assemble.
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Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brains. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat. Perhaps a couple of whales would be enough.
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Doesn't make any difference who we are or what we are, there's always somebody to look down on.
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