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Mark Twain -
Life
Quotes
66 Sourced Quotes
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I have seen an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficient institution. In all my experiences of
life
, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right.
Mark Twain
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She remained both girl and woman to the last day of her
life
. Under a grave and gentle exterior burned inextinguishable fires of sympathy, energy, devotion, enthusiasm, and absolutely limitless affection.
Mark Twain
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I have been on the verge of being an angel all my
life
, but it's never happened yet.
Mark Twain
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Darwin abolished special creations, contributed the Origin of Species and hitched all
life
together in one unbroken procession of Siamese Twins, the whole evolved by natural and orderly processes from one microscopic parent germ.
Mark Twain
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You can't make a
life
over. Society wouldn't let you if you would.
Mark Twain
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The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young
life
, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.
Mark Twain
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All my
life
I have been honest-comparatively honest. I could never use money I had not made honestly-I could only lend it.
Mark Twain
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What a wee little part of a person's
life
are his acts and his words! His real
life
is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.
Mark Twain
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There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the
life
of a people and make a valuable report - the native novelist.... And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people; and not anywhere else can these be had.
Mark Twain
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Of the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go any length for it—risk fortune, character, reputation,
life
itself.
Mark Twain
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It is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation,
life
a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up.
Mark Twain
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We recognize that there are no trivial occurrences in
life
if we get the right focus on them.
Mark Twain
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When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and
life
stands explained.
Mark Twain
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But death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure
life
no longer, death came and set him free.
Mark Twain
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Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high.
Life
to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.
Mark Twain
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Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this
life
, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.
Mark Twain
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I am living a new and exalted
life
of late. It steeps me in a sacred rapture to see a portrait develop and take soul under my hand. First, I throw off a study - just a mere study, a few apparently random lines - and to look at it you would hardly ever suspect who it was going to be; even I cannot tell, myself.
Mark Twain
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It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my
life
-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge.
Mark Twain
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Life
was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John Hay 41 he said
life
was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three years ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there was nothing for me to say. I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if a person ever really ceases to feel young - I mean, for a whole day at a time.
Mark Twain
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The events of
life
are mainly small events—they only seem large when we are close to them.
Mark Twain
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When grown-up persons indulge in practical jokes, the fact gauges them. They have lived narrow, obscure, and ignorant lives, and at full manhood they still retain and cherish a job lot of left-over standards and ideals that would have been discarded with their boyhood if they had then moved out into the world and a broader
life
.
Mark Twain
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It is a pity we can't escape from
life
when we are young.
Mark Twain
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Carlyle said "a lie cannot live." It shows that he did not know how to tell them. If I had taken out a
life
policy on this one the premiums would have bankrupted me ages ago.
Mark Twain
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There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's
life
when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
Mark Twain
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There isn't time—so brief is
life
—for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving—and but an instant, so to speak, for that.
Mark Twain
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Life
would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
Mark Twain
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Life
does not consist mainly—or even largely—of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.
Mark Twain
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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.
Mark Twain
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Start it at no particular time of your
life
; wander at your free will all over your
life
; talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale.
Mark Twain
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Nature's attitude toward all
life
is profoundly vicious, treacherous and malignant.
Mark Twain
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Quote of the day
Nothing is impossible in this world. Firm determination, it is said, can move heaven and earth. Things appear far beyond one's power, because one cannot set his heart on any arduous project due to want of strong will.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Mark Twain
Creative Commons
Born:
November 30, 1835
Died:
April 21, 1910
(aged 74)
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