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To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.

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
American
Absurdity
Incongruities
Art
Strings
Purposeless
Seems
Wander
Incongruity
Together
Correct
Innocently
Sometimes
Basis
Absurdities
Writing
Bases
Unaware
Way
Seem
Wandering
Position
String

More quotes by Mark Twain

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Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind it if you want to see it.
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Men are easily dealt with--but when you get the women started, you are in for it, you know.
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I have damaged my intellect trying to imagine why a man should want to invent a repeating clock, and how another man could be found to lust after it and buy it. The man who can guess these riddles is far on the way to guess why the human race was invented - which is another riddle which tires me.
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When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.
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Hero: Person in a book who does things which he can't and girl marries him for it.
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To gnaw on is human, towards digest, divine.
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What a world of trouble those who never marry escape! There are many happy matches, it is true, and sometimes my dear, and my love come from the heart but what sensible bachelor, rejoicing in his freedom and years of discretion, will run the tremendous risk?
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My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got.
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The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.
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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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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.
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We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can show off and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.
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The Creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo.
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Humor is the good natured side of a truth.
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A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.
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It's so damned humiliating.
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Learn from the mistakes of others - you won't live long enough to make them all yourself. He's opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer him the position.
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To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.
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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.
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There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what you know ain't so'.
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