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I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
Mark Twain -
...from the beginning of my sojourn in this world there was a persistent vacancy in me where the industry ought to be. (Ought to was is better, perhaps, though the most of the authorities differ as to this.)
Mark Twain
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She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.
Mark Twain -
Persons who think there is no such thing as luck-good or bad-are entitled to their opinion, although I think they ought to be shot for it.
Mark Twain -
...when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.
Mark Twain -
I started out alone to seek adventures. You don't really have to seek them-that is nothing but a phrase-they come to you.
Mark Twain -
It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people the Filipinos free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.
Mark Twain -
A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty.
Mark Twain
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Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.
Mark Twain -
Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
Mark Twain -
...now...that I am a wise person. As for me, I wish there were some more of us in the world, for I find it lonesome.
Mark Twain -
I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little-not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.
Mark Twain -
Mr. Roosevelt is the most formidable disaster that has befallen the country since the Civil War-but the vast mass of the nation loves him, is frantically fond of him, even idolizes him. This is the simple truth. It sounds like a libel upon the intelligence of the human race, but it isn't; there isn't any way to libel the intelligence of the human race.
Mark Twain -
Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
Mark Twain
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In 'Huckleberry Finn,' I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had.
Mark Twain -
An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar.
Mark Twain -
Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.
Mark Twain -
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
Mark Twain -
...in October 1866 I broke out as a lecturer, and from that day to this I have always been able to gain my living without doing any work; for the writing of books and magazine matter was always play, not work. I enjoyed it; it was merely billiards to me.
Mark Twain -
What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.
Mark Twain
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It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
Mark Twain -
I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
Mark Twain -
Virtue never has been as respectable as money.
Mark Twain -
The 'bus is English. When that is said, all is said. As a rule, any English thing is nineteen times as strong and twenty-three times as heavy as it needs to be. The 'bus fills these requirements.
Mark Twain