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The insincerity of man-all men are liars, partial or hiders of facts, half tellers of truths, shirks, moral sneaks. When a merely honest man appears he is a comet-his fame is eternal-needs no genius, no talent-mere honesty

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
Needs
Fame
Partial
Men
Eternal
Sneak
Genius
Liars
Sneaks
Talent
Appears
Tellers
Honest
Truths
Comet
Moral
Honesty
Shirk
Half
Merely
Insincerity
Facts
Mere
Comets

More quotes by Mark Twain

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I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor.
Mark Twain
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Names are not always what they seem.
Mark Twain
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Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Mark Twain
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In the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meeting, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one majestic level!
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Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.
Mark Twain
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The machine has several virtues... One may lean back in his chair and work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around.
Mark Twain
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I could be an idiot, or I can serve in Congress, but I repeat myself.
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No throne exists that has a right to exist, and no symbol of it, flying from any flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but the skull and crossbones of that kindred industry which differs from royalty only businesswise-merely as retail differs from wholesale.
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Methuselah lived to be 969 years old . You boys and girls will see more in the next fifty years than Methuselah saw in his whole lifetime.
Mark Twain
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How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man while he sleeps!
Mark Twain
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That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane not in all things, but in religious matters.
Mark Twain
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No child should be permitted to grow up without exercise for imagination. It enriches life for him. It makes things wonderful and beautiful.
Mark Twain
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It is higher and nobler to be kind.
Mark Twain
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God created war so that Americans would learn geography.
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!
Mark Twain
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Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.
Mark Twain
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To create man was a quaint and original idea, but to add the sheep was tautology.
Mark Twain
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The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can, furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities.
Mark Twain
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It has always been a peculiarity of the human race that it keeps two sets of morals in stock-the private and the real, and the public and the artificial.
Mark Twain
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Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.
Mark Twain