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Let your secret sympathies and your compassion be always with the under dog in the fight -- this is magnanimity but bet on the other one -- this is business.

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
Magnanimity
Dog
Compassion
Fight
Secret
Fighting
Business
Always
Sympathies

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Leaving out the gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement. If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would put their trust in The Health Board.
Mark Twain
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The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.
Mark Twain
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There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers after the Truth-have you ever heard of a permanent one?
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The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow.
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God created war so that Americans would learn geography.
Mark Twain
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Sagebrush is a very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his illegitimate child the mule.
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It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
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When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
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Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.
Mark Twain
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I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.
Mark Twain
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It is your human environment that makes climate
Mark Twain
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A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you than the ninety-and -nine which you had to work for, and money won at faro or in stock snuggles into your heart in the same way.
Mark Twain
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He charged nothing for his preaching and it was worth it too.
Mark Twain
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We adore titles and heredities in our hearts and ridicule them with our mouths. This is our democratic privilege.
Mark Twain
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There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars.
Mark Twain
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Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.
Mark Twain
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Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized.
Mark Twain
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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!
Mark Twain
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For England must not fall: it would mean an inundation of Russian & German political degradations which would envelop the globe & steep it in a sort of Middle-Age night & slaverly which would last till Christ comes again - which I hope he will not do he made trouble enough before.
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They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are gettin' ready to prove that a man's heirs ain't got any right to his property.
Mark Twain