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Nothing is made in vain, but the fly came near it.

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
Near
Vain
Came
Nothing
Made

More quotes by Mark Twain

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There was a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in.
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But it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it.
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Jesus died to save men - a small thing for an immortal to do - and didn't save many, anyway. But if he had been damned for the race, that would have been act of a size proper to a god, and would have saved the whole race.
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We called him Barney for short. We couldn't use his real name, there wasn't time.
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If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.
Mark Twain
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A historian who would convey the truth has got to lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.
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If there is one thing that is really cheerful in the world, it is cheerfulness. I have noticed it often. And I have noticed that when a man is right down cheerful, he is seldom unhappy for the time being. Such is the nature of man.
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Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures?
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You ought never to sass old people- unless they sass you first.
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Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
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The Mississippi River will always have its own way no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise.
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Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires constant effort, vigilance and reevaluation.
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To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
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Nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of being hanged.
Mark Twain
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The reason most people don't go to church is because they've already been.
Mark Twain
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My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
Mark Twain
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Man seems to be a rickety poor sort of thing, any way you take him a kind of British Museum of infirmities and inferiorities. He is always undergoing repairs. A machine that was as unreliable as he is would have no market.
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All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.
Mark Twain
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Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene
Mark Twain
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Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
Mark Twain