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

More quotes by Mark Twain

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We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an interest in familiar things.
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The Impartial Friend: Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all--the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.
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Heaven is by favor if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.
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Grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in.
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There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
Mark Twain
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Man is a marvelous curiosity...he thinks he is the Creator's pet...he even believes the Creator loves him has passion for him sits up nights to admire him yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks he listens. Isn't it a quaint idea.
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At noon I observed a bevy of nude young native women bathing in the sea, and I went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen.
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When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.
Mark Twain
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You can't make a life over. Society wouldn't let you if you would.
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I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome variety is pleasing.
Mark Twain
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Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.
Mark Twain
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We all like to see people sea-sick when we are not ourselves.
Mark Twain
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Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.
Mark Twain
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You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure--because he's got feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhapsbut otherwise he is just as much a human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A jay's gifts and instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman.
Mark Twain
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Don't go to sleep, so many people die there.
Mark Twain
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The best of us would rather be popular than right.
Mark Twain
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Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, apparently. What supports its poverty-stricken people or its Government, is a mystery.
Mark Twain
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You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain
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it is not wise to keep the fire going under a slander unless you can get some large advantage out of keeping it alive. Few slanders can stand the wear of silence.
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There's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for only just the right kind.
Mark Twain