Quote

Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest you want them all to land in hell together, and right away.

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
Character
Novel
Surely
Together
Hell
Test
Wells
Land
Affair
Well
Successful
Suffer
Right
Suffering
John
Discriminating
Feel
Interest
Tests
Ward
Feels
Strong
Characters
Affairs
Good
Away
Failure
Divided

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An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency.
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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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My experience with horses is that they never throw away a chance to go lame.
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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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It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
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It's not the parts of the Bible I don't know that worries me...it's the parts that I do.
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To gnaw on is human, towards digest, divine.
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By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.
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I pledged myself to smoke but one cigar a day. I kept the cigar waiting until bedtime, then I had a luxurious time with it. But desire persecuted me every day and all day long. I found myself hunting for larger cigars...within the month my cigar had grown to such proportions I could have used it as a crutch.
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Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.
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Damn these human beings if I had invented them I would go hide my head in a bag.
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The first time a student realizes that a little learning is a dangerous thing is when he brings home a poor report card.
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Ours is the land of the free-nobody denies that-nobody challenges it. (Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.)
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Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.
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I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past-can't be restored.
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Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds.
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I should be sorry to think it was the publishers themselves they got up this entire little flutter to enable them to unload a book that was taking too much room in their cellars, but you can never tell what a publisher will do. I have been one myself.
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