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Wisdom teaches us that none but birds should go out early, and that not even birds should do it unless they are out of worms.

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
Birds
Bird
None
Early
Unless
Wisdom
Teach
Worms
Even
Teaches

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The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.
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Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.
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'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
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Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail the more you pay, the more is exacted.
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Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.
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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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I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past-can't be restored.
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What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.
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Good wine needs no bush a jug is the thing.
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I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else.
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A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificiant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.
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If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.
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Ethical man: A Christian holding four aces.
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It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
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No real estate is permanently valuable but the grave.
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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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It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.
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It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
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Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
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A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain.
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