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I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic ... something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

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
Reading
Read
Paradise
Lost
Classic
Ever
Poetry
Book
Nobody
Take
Trust
Something
Wants
Believe
Everybody

More quotes by Mark Twain

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The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.
Mark Twain
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It makes one hope and believe that a day will come when, in the eye of the law, literary property will be as sacred as whiskey, or any other of the necessaries of life. It grieves me to think how far more profound and reverent a respect the law would have for literature if a body could only get drunk on it.
Mark Twain
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Etiquette requires us to admire the human race.
Mark Twain
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It's easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them.
Mark Twain
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One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a really beautiful woman is after considerable acquaintance with her and the rule applies to Niagara Falls, to majestic mountains, and to mosques-especially to mosques.
Mark Twain
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Your friends may love you in private but your enemies will hate you in public.
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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A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.
Mark Twain
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The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.
Mark Twain
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Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.
Mark Twain
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No real estate is permanently valuable but the grave.
Mark Twain
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I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them.
Mark Twain
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He [George Washington Cable] has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it.
Mark Twain
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We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can show off and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.
Mark Twain
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Life is short. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly and love truly.
Mark Twain
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I like criticism, but it must be my way.
Mark Twain
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Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Mark Twain
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Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething.
Mark Twain
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There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to but a hog is different.
Mark Twain
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The most difficult We do not deal in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.
Mark Twain