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It is impossible that a genius - at least a literary genius - can ever be discovered by his intimates they are so close to him that he is out of focus to them and they can't get at his proportions they can't perceive that there is any considerable difference between his bulk and their own.

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
Genius
Bulk
Difference
Proportions
Differences
Considerable
Focus
Literary
Least
Proportion
Impossible
Discovered
Ever
Perceive
Close
Intimates

More quotes by Mark Twain

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The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession-and take the credit of the correction.
Mark Twain
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Being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time.
Mark Twain
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Seasickness: at first you are so sick you are afraid you will die, and then you are so sick you are afraid you won't die.
Mark Twain
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It is at our mother's knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals.
Mark Twain
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In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
Mark Twain
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These people´s God has shown them by a million acts that he respects none of the Bible´s statues. He breaks every one of them himself, adultery and all.
Mark Twain
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He had the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.
Mark Twain
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Like most people, I often feel mean, and act accordingly.
Mark Twain
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A sense of humor is the one thing no one will admit to not having.
Mark Twain
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Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.
Mark Twain
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They do say that when a man starts down hill everybody is ready to help him with a kick, and I suppose it is so.
Mark Twain
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I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.
Mark Twain
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Human Beings are the only animals that blush, or need to.
Mark Twain
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The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.
Mark Twain
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Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
Mark Twain
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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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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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Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
Mark Twain
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I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out of all proportion to the European experience.
Mark Twain
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Data is like garbage. You'd better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.
Mark Twain