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Experience of life (not of books) is the only capital usable in such a book as you have attempted one can make no judicious use of this capital while it is new.

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
Life
Attempted
Capital
Books
Use
Experience
Book
Writing
Usable
Make
Judicious

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The human being places sexual intercourse above all other joys, but leaves it out of his heaven.
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If you have nothing to say, say nothing.
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The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
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I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.
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In forgiving, people are not being asked to forget. On the contrary, it is important to remember, so that we should not let such atrocities happen again. Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously...drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens our entire existence.
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The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.
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What a lumbering poor vehicle prose is for the conveying of a great thought! ... Prose wanders around with a lantern & laboriously schedules & verifies the details & particulars of a valley & its frame of crags & peaks, then Poetry comes, & lays bare the whole landscape with a single splendid flash.
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The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward.
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God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention.
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The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the tellingthe comic and the witty story upon the matter.
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I like the truth sometimes, but I don't care enough for it to hanker after it.
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While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.
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Human beings are the only creatures who blush - or who need to.
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The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.
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Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of.
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Seasickness: at first you are so sick you are afraid you will die, and then you are so sick you are afraid you won't die.
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Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.
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You cannot have all chiefs you gotta have Indians too. Perfect love cannot be without equality. A friend to everybody and to nobody is the same thing. We are all alike, on the inside.
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We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking.
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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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