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A pessimist is a well-informed optimist.

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
Pessimist
Informed
Optimist
Wells
Well

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When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.
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Twenty-four years ago I was strangely handsome in San Francisco in the rainy season I was often mistaken for fair weather.
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The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
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The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
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Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.
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A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.
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If ever you've been down in the dumps, hear these iconic authors share with you more than their writing wisdom.
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There's always a hole in theories somewhere if you look close enough.
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The good Lord didn't create anything without a purpose, but the fly comes close.
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His money is twice tainted: taint yours and taint mine.
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Love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just comes-none knows whence-and cannot explain itself.
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Bridgeport? Said I. Camelot, Said he.
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the size of a misfortune is not determinable by an outsider’s measurement of it but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it.
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I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion.
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The rain ...falls upon the just and the unjust alike a thing which would not happen if I were superintending the rain's affairs. No, I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust outdoors, I would drown him.
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Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
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As a boy, I once saw a cart of melons that sorely tempted me. I sneaked up to the cart and stole a melon. I went into the alley to devour it, but no sooner had I set my teeth into it, than I paused, a strange feeling coming over me. I came to a quick conclusion. Firmly, I walked up to that cart, replaced the melon - and took a ripe one.
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Genius has no youth, but starts with the ripeness of age and old experience.
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Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.
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We don't cut up when mad men are bred by the old legitimate regular stock religions, but we can't allow wildcat religions to indulge in such disastrous experiments.
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