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

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?
Mark Twain
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The happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another.
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The weakest of all weak things is a virtue that has not been tested in the fire.
Mark Twain
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He was a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
Mark Twain
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It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.
Mark Twain
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When I take up one of Jane Austen's books ... I feel like a barkeep entering the kingdom of heaven. I know what his sensation would be and his private comments. He would not find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so.
Mark Twain
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for business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.
Mark Twain
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A friend is someone who stays in when the rest of the world has gone out.
Mark Twain
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I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.
Mark Twain
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A tax is a fine for doing well, a fine is a tax for doing wrong.
Mark Twain
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Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.
Mark Twain
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If you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could to-day.
Mark Twain
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I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit.
Mark Twain
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The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
Mark Twain
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There ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore.
Mark Twain
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Good exercise for the heart: reach out and help your neighbor
Mark Twain
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If you have to swallow a frog, don't stare at it too long.
Mark Twain
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Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain
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Education that consists in learning things and not the meaning of them is feeding upon the husks and not the corn
Mark Twain
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In my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race - never quite sane in the night.
Mark Twain