Quote

I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church. They can't be made to do it in any possible way.

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
Church
Success
Lecture
Made
Delivered
Way
Lectures
Never
Laugh
People
Afraid
Laughing
Possible

More quotes by Mark Twain

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The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.
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India has two million gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers India is the only millionaire.
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I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
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There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory
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For we were little Christian children and early learned the value of forbidden fruit.
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Honor is a harder master than the law.
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We are called the nation of inventors. And we are. We could still claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had stopped with the first thing we ever invented, which was human liberty.
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What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. . . . The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. . . . When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.
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There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
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But in this country we have one great privilege which they don't have in other countries. When a thing gets to be absolutely unbearable the people can rise up and throw it off. That's the finest asset we've got - the ballot box.
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Thanksgiving Day - Let all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks, now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys, they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji.
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It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.
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The machine has several virtues... One may lean back in his chair and work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around.
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The cost of living hasn't effected its popularity.
Mark Twain
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It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
Mark Twain
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A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic compliment.
Mark Twain
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Demagogue--a vessel containing beer and other liquids.
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I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.
Mark Twain
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Eating and sleeping are the only activities that should be allowed to interrupt a man's enjoyment of his cigar.
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Man can seldom - very, very, seldom - fight a winning fight against his training the odds are too heavy.
Mark Twain