Quote

To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else -- these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

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
Justice
Tame
Pleasure
Trivial
Else
Commonplace
Something
Cheap
Things
Ecstasy
Pleasures
Compared
Ecstasies
Anybody
Confer

More quotes by Mark Twain

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When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
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Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
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My father was a Saint Bernard, my mother was a Collie, but I am a Presbyterian.
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The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
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I have a religion-but you will call it blasphemy. It is that there is a God for the rich man but none for the poor.....Perhaps your religion will sustain you,will feed you-I place no dependence in mine. Our religions are alike, though, in one respect-neither can make a man happy when he is out of luck.
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There is no such thing as a new idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.
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Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience - 4000 critics.
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It has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can.
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By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.
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I cannot help but notice that there is no problem between us that cannot be solved by your departure.
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I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic ... something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
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The human race consists of the damned and the ought-to-be damned.
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The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession-and take the credit of the correction.
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I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
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Training- training is everything training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature it is folly there is no such thing as nature what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own they are transmitted to us, trained into us.
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I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
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Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
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Why is it that, among men, physical courage is a trait so plenteous yet moral courage is a trait so rare?
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I bring you this stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Phillipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass.
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More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the [biblical] texts that authorised them remain.
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