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None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness but we can try.

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
Half
Many
Trying
Fountain
Pens
Virtues
None
Virtue

More quotes by Mark Twain

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It is better to support schools than jails.
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To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.
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No one can tell me what is a good cigar--for me. I am the only judge... There are no standards--no real standards. Each man's preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him.
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Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.
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The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
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Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.
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To believe yourself brave is to be brave it is the one only essential thing.
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We must put up with clothes as they are they have their reason for existing. They are on us to expose us to advertise what we wear them to conceal.
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There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers after the Truth-have you ever heard of a permanent one?
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A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't.
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If you have to swallow a frog, don't stare at it too long.
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April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
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I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.
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In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
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Honest poverty is a gem that even a king might be proud to call his own - but I wish to sell out
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He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
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Delicacy - a sad, sad false delicacy - robs literature of the two best things among its belongings: Family-circle narratives & obscene stories.
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When the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface
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I was born with Halley's Comet and I expect to die upon its return
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I have not professionally dealt in truth. Many when they come to die have spent all the truth that was in them, and enter the next world as paupers. I have saved up enough to make an astonishment there.
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