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It is a good thing to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.

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
Profit
Benefits
Higher
Nobler
Public
Tangible
Write
Amusement
Writing
Instruction
Thing
Actual
Good
Benefit

More quotes by Mark Twain

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If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.
Mark Twain
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I was warned to stop smoking, which I did, for two or three days, but it was too lonesome, and I have resumed - in a modified way - 4 smokes a day instead of 40. This will have a good effect. On the bank balance.
Mark Twain
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What is the chief end of man?-to get rich. In what way?-dishonestly if we can honestly if we must. Who is God, the one and only true? Money is God. Gold and Greenbacks and Stock-father, son, and ghosts of same, three persons in one These are the true and only God, mighty and supreme.
Mark Twain
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Every one knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere.
Mark Twain
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Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Mark Twain
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I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.
Mark Twain
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Talent without work is useless, thank God
Mark Twain
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A mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top.
Mark Twain
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A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle.
Mark Twain
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Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene
Mark Twain
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There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.
Mark Twain
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A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.
Mark Twain
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Every year you wait, long ago gets farther away.
Mark Twain
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The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.
Mark Twain
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A newspaper is not just for reporting the news as it is, but to make people mad enough to do something about it.
Mark Twain
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Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.
Mark Twain
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Never tell a lie-except for practice.
Mark Twain
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A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.
Mark Twain
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It was on the 10th day of May - 1884 - that I confessed to age by mounting spectacles for the first time, and in the same hour I renewed my youth, to outward appearance, by mounting a bicycle for the first time. The spectacles stayed on.
Mark Twain
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The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a person only tells them with all his might.
Mark Twain