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

More quotes by Mark Twain

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When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.
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There is not a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.
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Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brains. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat. Perhaps a couple of whales would be enough.
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A banquet is probably the most fatiguing thing in the world except ditchdigging. It is the insanest of all recreations. The inventor of it overlooked no detail that could furnish weariness, distress, harassment, and acute and long-sustained misery of mind and body.
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We called him Barney for short. We couldn't use his real name, there wasn't time.
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We had an abundance of mangoes, papaias and bananas here, but the pride of the islands, the most delicious fruit known to men, cherimoya, was not in season. It has a soft pulp, like a pawpaw, and is eaten with a spoon.
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I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache and what is more, I never intend to have it.
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Thanksgiving day. Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks now, but the turkeys.
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Independence-is loyalty to one's best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty to the general idols and fetishes.
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How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!
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I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church. They can't be made to do it in any possible way.
Mark Twain
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The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nations, and from the mass of the nation only-not from its privileged classes.
Mark Twain
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What a curious kind of fool a girl is. Never been licked in school. What's a licking?
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I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two million dollars.
Mark Twain
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It's not the parts of the Bible I don't know that worries me...it's the parts that I do.
Mark Twain
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To be good is noble but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Mark Twain
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It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.
Mark Twain
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Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought.
Mark Twain
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Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.
Mark Twain
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I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age in 1977 I shall be 142.
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