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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.

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
American
Comic
Upon
Effect
Stories
English
Matter
Telling
Effects
Witty
Depends
Manner
Humor
French
Story
Humorous

More quotes by Mark Twain

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For we were little Christian children and early learned the value of forbidden fruit.
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Make your mark in New York and you are a made man.
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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.
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They do say that when a man starts down hill everybody is ready to help him with a kick, and I suppose it is so.
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The Creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo.
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The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
Mark Twain
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Nothing helps scenery like bacon and eggs.
Mark Twain
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Old habits cannot be thrown out the upstairs window. They have to be coaxed downstairs one step at a time.
Mark Twain
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France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
Mark Twain
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There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.
Mark Twain
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When the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface
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A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
Mark Twain
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Many people have the reasoning facility, but no one uses it in religious matters.
Mark Twain
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Heroine: Girl in a book who is saved from drowning by a hero and marries him next week, but if it was to be over again ten years later it is likely she would rather have a life-belt and he would rather have her have it. Hero: Person in a book who does things which he can't and girl marries him for it.
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Never be haughty to the humble, never be humble to the haughty.
Mark Twain
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The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils, but give me the banjo.
Mark Twain
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The kingly office is entitled to no respect. It was originally procured by the highwayman's methods. It remains a perpetuated crime, can never be anything but the symbol of a crime. It is no more entitled to respect than is the flag of a pirate.
Mark Twain
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How lovely is death and how niggardly it is doled out.
Mark Twain
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Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.
Mark Twain
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You may honestly feel grateful that homeopathy survived the attempts of the allopaths (orthodoxy) to destroy it.
Mark Twain