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The critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.

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
Critics
Tumble
Otherwise
Deposits
Somebody
Bugs
Else
Critic
Symbol
Editors
Eggs
Dung
Symbols
Hatch

More quotes by Mark Twain

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A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic compliment.
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One must travel, to learn.
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But it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it.
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Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
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Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
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When one has tasted watermelon he knows what the angels eat.
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A man who carries a cat by the tail is getting experience that will always be helpful. He isn't likely to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn't likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!
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George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.
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Wit and Humor - if any difference, it is in duration - lightning and electric light. Same material, apparently but one is vivid, and can do damage - the other fools along and enjoys elaboration.
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Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch.
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Too bad that youth is wasted on the young.
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As a rule we develop a borrowed European idea forward, and ... Europe develops a borrowed American idea backwards.
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Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
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I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.
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If you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could to-day.
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Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection-that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement.
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When I take up one of Jane Austen's books ... I feel like a barkeep entering the kingdom of heaven. I know what his sensation would be and his private comments. He would not find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so.
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I never write metropolis for seven cents when I can write city and get paid the same.
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Wisdom teaches us that none but birds should go out early, and that not even birds should do it unless they are out of worms.
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I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.
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