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Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.

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
Determinism
Circumstances
Make
Men

More quotes by Mark Twain

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A mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top.
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Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch.
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It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.
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The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
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To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.
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The choir always tittered and whispered all through the service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was.
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As for the dinosaur - But Noah's conscience was easy it was not named in his cargo list and he and the boys were not aware that there was such a creature. He said he could not blame himself for not knowing about the dinosaur, because it was an American animal and America had not then been discovered.
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Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.
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By and by when each nation has 20,000 battleships and 5,000,000 soldiers we shall all be safe and the wisdom of statesmanship will stand confirmed.
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Experience teaches us only one thing at a time - and hardly that, in my case.
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When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
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Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out.
Mark Twain
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We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes
Mark Twain
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Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Mark Twain
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The equator was wisely put where it is, because if it had been run through Europe all the kings would have tried to grab it.
Mark Twain
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[I] shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes. Indeed, upon second thought, I will not use it then, for it is unchristian, inelegant, and degrading--though to speak truly I do not see how house rent and taxes are going to be discussed worth a cent without it.
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There is no such thing as a new idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.
Mark Twain
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There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what you know ain't so'.
Mark Twain
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There isn't any way to libel the human race.
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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