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Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:

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FOSSILS

Nature made thousands and thousands of now extinct species in her apprentice-days which turned out to be pure failures, like the flies and the Russians, and she devoted millions of years to trying to hunt up long-felt wants for them to supply, but there were none, and a museum never occurred to her. So she abolished them all, and scattered their bones in myriads in the eternal rocks, and there they rest to this day, a solemn reminder for us that for every animal-success achieved by her she has scored fifteen hundred failures.
- "Flies and Russians" published in Fables of Man, 1972

fossil
Fossil from Quarry Farm - Elmira, New York.

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