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If a spectacle is going to be particularly imposing I prefer to see it through somebody else's eyes, because that man will always exaggerate. Then I can exaggerate his exaggeration, and my account of the thing will be the most impressive.

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
Else
Impressive
Thing
Account
Going
Prefer
Always
Accounts
Exaggerate
Men
Particularly
Copying
Somebody
Spectacle
Eyes
Exaggeration
Eye
Imposing

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When an audience does not complain, it is a compliment, and when it does, it is a compliment, too, if unaccompanied by violence.
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Life does not consist mainly - or even largely - of facts and happenings.
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Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
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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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Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.
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In the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meeting, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one majestic level!
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Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
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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 critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.
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There isn't anything you can't stand if you are only born and bred to it.
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From the dome of St. Peter's one can see every notable object in Rome... He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe.
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What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.
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We regret the things we don't do more than the things we do.
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We are all alike, on the inside.
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I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast-but for luncheon-for dinner- for tea-for supper-for between meals.
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Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.
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Sum all the gifts that man is endowed with, and we give our greatest share of admiration to his energy. And today, if I were a heathen, I would rear a statue to Energy and fall down and worship it!
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Prediction is difficult- particularly when it involves the future.
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Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of [Muslim] rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound.
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But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie.
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