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The sole impulse which dictates and compels a man's every act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs.... It is our only spur, our whip, our goad, our impelling power we have no other.

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
Necessity
Dictates
Impulse
Whips
Impelling
Cost
Spurs
Goad
Power
Emergency
Imperious
Every
Emergencies
Compels
Men
Approval
Securing
Sole
Spur
Costs
Whip

More quotes by Mark Twain

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It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.
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If there is one thing that will make a man peculiarly and insufferable self-conceited, it is to have his stomach behave itself, the first day at sea, when nearly all his comrades are seasick.
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The only people who should use the possessive 'we' are kings, newspaper editors, and persons with tapeworms.
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Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people.
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Man proposes, but God blocks the game.
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The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy.
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Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
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Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
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Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual harmonious development, its culminating graces-and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train.
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Always tell the truth then you don't have to remember anything
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I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: Now here are these two unaccountable freaks they came in together, they must go out together.
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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.
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And how moving is the eloquence of the untaught when it is the heart that is speaking!
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All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.
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Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene
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Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues.
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When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.
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I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.
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To be great, truly great, you have to be the kind of person who makes the others around you great.
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I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them.
Mark Twain