Mark Twain Quotations

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Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the “greatest humorist this country has produced”, and William Faulkner called him “the father of American literature”. His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter often called “The Great American Novel”.

“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”

“A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.” – Mark Twain

“A body can’t be too partic’lar how they talk ’bout these-yer dead people, Tom.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said, “Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children’s alone,” and she took wing and went off to see about it — which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.” – Mark Twain

“A Christian mother’s first duty is to soil her child’s mind, and she does not neglect it. Her lad grows up to be a missionary, and goes to the innocent savage and to the civilized Japanese, and soils their minds. Whereupon they adopt immodesty, they conceal their bodies, they stop bathing naked together.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” – Mark Twain

“A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.” – Mark Twain

“A consciously exaggerated compliment is an offense.” – Mark Twain, Who Is Mark Twain?

“a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can’t see ’em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear ’em talk; and when they’re” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.” – Mark Twain

“A dog is “der Hund”; a woman is “die Frau”; a horse is “das Pferd”; now you put that dog in the genitive case, and is he the same dog he was before? No, sir; he is “des Hundes”; put him in the dative case and what is he? Why, he is “dem Hund.” Now you snatch him into the accusative case and how is it with him? Why, he is “den Hunden.” But suppose he happens to be twins and you have to pluralize him- what then? Why, they’ll swat that twin dog around through the 4 cases until he’ll think he’s an entire international dog-show all in is own person. I don’t like dogs, but I wouldn’t treat a dog like that- I wouldn’t even treat a borrowed dog that way. Well, it’s just the same with a cat. They start her in at the nominative singular in good health and fair to look upon, and they sweat her through all the 4 cases and the 16 the’s and when she limps out through the accusative plural you wouldn’t recognize her for the same being. Yes, sir, once the German language gets hold of a cat, it’s goodbye cat. That’s about the amount of it.” – Mark Twain

“A dog is der Hund the dog; a women is die Frau the wom[an]; a horse is das Pferd, the horse; now you put that dog in the Genitive case, & is he the same dog he was before? No sir; he is das Hundes; put him in the Dative case & what is he? Why, he is dem Hund. Now you snatch him into the accusative case & how is it with him? Why he is den Hunden? … Read moreBut suppose he happens to be twins & you have to pluralize him – what then? Why sir they’ll swap that twin dog around thro’ the four cases till he’ll think he’s an entire International Dog Show all in his own person. I don’t like dogs, but I wouldn’t treat a dog like that. I wouldn’t even treat a borrowed dog that way.” – Mark Twain

“A feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man’s brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in — and by and by everybody’s killed off, and there ain’t no more feud. But it’s kind of slow, and takes a long time.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“A few fly bites cannot stop a spirited horse.” – Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens)

“A full belly is of little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart.” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“A fully belly is little worth where the mind is starved.” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn’t.” – Mark Twain

“A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell–mouths mercy, and invented hell–mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“A good deed ain’t ever forgot.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.” – Mark Twain

“A great and priceless thing is a new interest! How it takes possession of a man! how it clings to him, how it rides him!” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.” – Mark Twain

“A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.” – Mark Twain

“A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“A humorous treatment of the rigid uniformitarian view came from Mark Twain. Although the shortening of the Mississippi River he referred to was the result of engineering projects eliminating many of the bends in the river, it is a thought-provoking spoof:
The Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago. . . . Its length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and “let on” to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past . . . what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! . . .

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. . . . There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“A hypocritical businessman, whose fortune had been the misfortune of many others, told Mark Twain piously, “Before I die I intend to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I want to climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud.” – Mark Twain

“A jury of inquest was impaneled, and after due deliberation and inquiry they returned the inevitable American verdict which has been so familiar to our ears all the days of our lives—”NOBODY TO BLAME.” – Mark Twain, The Collected Works of Mark Twain: The Complete & Unabridged Novels

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” – Mark Twain

“A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best of medicines and the best doctors ” – Mark Twain

“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” – Mark Twain

“A man can’t get his rights in a government like this. Sometimes I’ve a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.” – Mark Twain

“A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.” – Mark Twain

“A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.” – Mark Twain

“A man must not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and community have at heart if he would be liked.” – Mark Twain

“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns a lesson he can learn in no other way.” – Mark Twain

“A man who goes around with a prophecy-gun ought never to get discouraged: if he will keep up his heart and fire at everything he sees, he is bound to hit something by and by.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No–that is a thought which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened to me so many times.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson and Other Tales

“A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.” – Mark Twain

“A mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most impeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an out-lying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place.” – Mark Twain

“A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other. Age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; shames and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities. Those they love are taken from them and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, misery, grows heavier year by year. At length ambition is dead; pride is dead; vanity is dead; longing for release is in their place. It comes at last – the only unpoisoned gift ever had for them – and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they have left no sign that have existed – a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever. Then another myriad takes their place and copies all they did and goes along the same profitless road and vanishes as they vanished – to make room for another and another and a million other myriads to follow the same arid path through the same desert and accomplish what the first myriad and all the myriads that came after it accomplished – nothing!” – Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and Circumstances comes and upsets them—or enlarges them. Some patriots throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The PLANS stop there; then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and turns these modest riots into a revolution.

And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan to find a new route to an old country. Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he found a new WORLD. And HE gets the credit of it to this day. He hadn’t anything to do with it.” – Mark Twain, What Is Man? and Other Essays, improved 11/28/2010

“A new-comer of any age or either sex was an impressive curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“A newspaper is not just for reporting the news as it is, but to make people mad enough to do something about it.” – Mark Twain

“A person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim or doubtful.” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad

“A person who won’t read books has no advantage over one who can’t read books.” – Mark Twain

“A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.” – Mark Twain

“A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.” – Mark Twain

“A Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need,” – Mark Twain On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“A proof once established is better left so.” – Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

“A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them.” – Mark Twain [Letter to the Millicent (Rogers) Library, February 22, 1894]”

“a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them,” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“A robber is more high-toned than what a pirate is—as a general thing. In most countries they’re awful high up in the nobility—dukes and such.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.” – Mark Twain

“A Russian imbues his polite things with a heartiness, both of phrase and expression, that compels belief in their sincerity.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as you don’t try to knock her down with it.” – Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches

“A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.” – Mark Twain

“A sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience.” – Mark Twain

“a square, flat-roofed hovel, neatly frescoed, with its wall-tops gallantly bastioned and turreted with dried camel-refuse, gives to a landscape a feature that is exceedingly festive and picturesque, especially if one is careful to remember to stick in a cat wherever, about the premises, there is room for a cat to sit.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“A street in Constantinople is a picture which one ought to see once—not oftener.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.” – Mark Twain

“A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes.” – Mark Twain

“A thistle grows about here which has needles on it that would pierce through leather, I think; if one touches you, you can find relief in nothing but profanity.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“A well put together unreality is pretty hard to beat.” – Mark Twain

“A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.” – Mark Twain

“A woman’s intuition is better than a man’s. Nobody knows anything, really, you know, and a woman can guess a good deal nearer than a man.” – Mark Twain, The Gilded Age

“Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.” – Mark Twain

“Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething.” – Mark Twain

“Adam is fading out. It is on account of Darwin and that crowd. I can see that he is not going to last much longer. There’s a plenty of signs. He is getting belittled to a germ—a little bit of a speck that you can’t see without a microscope powerful enough to raise a gnat to the size of a church.

(‘The Refuge of the Derelicts’ collected in Mark Twain and John Sutton Tuckey, The Devil’s Race-Track: Mark Twain’s Great Dark Writings (1980), 340-41. – 1980)” – Mark Twain

“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent. – Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson

“Additional problems are the offspring of poor solutions.” – Mark Twain

“Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.” – Mark Twain

“After a long time and many questions, Satan said, “The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the — well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.” – Mark Twain, Diaries of Adam & Eve

“After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each other’s faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing, sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“After much reflection—suppose it was a lie? What then? Was it such a great matter? Aren’t we always acting lies? Then why not tell them?”  – Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

“After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers; and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by-and-by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him; because I don’t take no stock in dead people.” – Mark Twain

“After supper she got out her book and learned me about” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Curious Tales

“Age is a thing about mind over matter: if you don’t mind it doesn’t matter.” – Mark Twain

“Ah, Antonio, it IS the noblest sport that ever was. I would give a year of my life to see it. Is the bull always killed?”   “Yes. Sometimes a bull is timid, finding himself in so strange a place, and he stands trembling, or tries to retreat. Then everybody despises him for his cowardice and wants him punished and made ridiculous; so they hough him from behind, and it is the funniest thing in the world to see him hobbling around on his severed legs; the whole vast house goes into hurricanes of laughter over it; I have laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks to see it. When he has furnished…” – Mark Twain

“Ah, heavens and earth, friend, if you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could to-day.” – Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays, 2 Vols

“Ah, if he could only die temporarily!” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.” – Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“Ah, were he now before me,
In spite of injured pride,
I fear my eyes would pardon
Before my tongue could chide.” – Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die, Vol.1

“Ah–Ferguson–what–what did you say was the name of the party who wrote this?” “Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher Colombo!” Another deliberate examination. “Ah–did he write it himself; or–or how?” “He write it himself!–Christopher Colombo! He’s own hand-writing, write by himself!” Then the doctor laid the document down and said: “Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could write better than that.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“ain’t a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Ain’t you my chile? En does you know anything dat a mother won’t do for her chile? Day ain’t nothin’ a white mother won’t do for her chile. Who made ’em so? De Lord done it. En who made de niggers? De Lord made ’em. In de inside, mothers is all de same. De good lord he made ’em so.” – Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson

“all democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it” – Mark Twain, Christian Science

“All diets are wholesome. Some are wholesomer than others, but all the ordinary diets are wholesome enough for the people who use them. Whether the food be fine or coarse it will taste good and it will nourish if a watch be kept upon the appetite and a little starvation introduced every time it weakens.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“All distances in the East are measured by hours, not miles. A good horse will walk three miles an hour over nearly any kind of a road; therefore, an hour, here, always stands for three miles. This method of computation is bothersome and annoying; and until one gets thoroughly accustomed to it, it carries no intelligence to his mind until he has stopped and translated the pagan hours into Christian miles, just as people do with the spoken words of a foreign language they are acquainted with, but not familiarly enough to catch the meaning in a moment. Distances traveled by human feet are also estimated by hours and minutes, though I do not know what the base of the calculation is. In Constantinople you ask, “How far is it to the Consulate?” and they answer, “About ten minutes.” “How far is it to the Lloyds’ Agency?” “Quarter of an hour.” “How far is it to the lower bridge?” “Four minutes.” I can not be positive about it, but I think that there, when a man orders a pair of pantaloons, he says he wants them a quarter of a minute in the legs and nine seconds around the waist.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“All emotion is involuntary when genuine.” – Mark Twain

“All great men are dead, and I’m not feeling too well myself” – Mark Twain

“All I care to know about a man is that he is a human being… he can’t be any worse.” – Mark Twain

“All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they’re a mighty ornery lot. It’s the way they’re raised.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the gardener with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.” – Mark Twain

“All kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“All life demands change, variety, contrast—else there is small zest to it.” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations

“All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the “elect” have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so “slow,” so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.” – Mark Twain

“All men speak in bitter disapproval of the Devil, but they do it reverently, not flippantly; but Father Adolf’s way was very different; he called him by every name he could lay his tongue to, and it made everyone shudder that heard him; and often he would even speak of him scornfully and scoffingly; then the people crossed themselves and went quickly out of his presence, fearing that something fearful might happen.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“all men will confess that without Christian civilization war must have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“All right then, I’ll go to hell.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.” – Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell” – Mark Twain

“All say, “How hard it is that we have to die”—a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.” – Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson

“All the first years, their only question had been — asked with beseechings and tears that might have moved stone, in time, perhaps, but hearts are not stones: “Is he alive?” “Is she alive?” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“All the memories in the world, good or bad, are not worth one slender hope for the future; and” – Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 2

“All the rest of [Shakespeare’s] vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures — an Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts.” – Mark Twain

“all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave,” – Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. ” – Mark Twain

“Almost every convert runs the risk of catching our civilization… I compassionate missionary, leave China! come home and convert these Christians!” – Mark Twain

“Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.” – Mark Twain

“Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.” – Mark Twain

“Always obey your superiors, if you have any.” – Mark Twain

“Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.” – Mark Twain

“Always—from all companies, high or low—she went forth richer in honor and esteem than when she came.” – Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc – Vol I

“Among other common lies, we have the silent lie—the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.” – Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Among you boys you have a game: you stand a row of bricks on end a few inches apart; you push a brick, it knocks its neighbor over, the neighbor knocks over the next brick–and so on till all the row is prostrate. That is human life. A child’s first act knocks over the initial brick, and the rest will follow inexorably. If you could see into the future, as I can, you would see everything that was going to happen to that creature; for nothing can change the order of its life after the first event has determined it. That is, nothing will change it, because each act unfailingly begets an act, that act begets another, and so on to the end, and the seer can look forward down the line and see just when each act is to have birth, from cradle to grave.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“An Autobiography is the truest of all books,for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell (though I didn’t use that figure)–the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.” – Mark Twain

“An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.” – Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“. . . an enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere. – A Tramp Abroad” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“An honest politician is an oxymoron.” – Mark Twain

“An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth–a fact that is recognized by the law of libel. Among other common lies we have the silent lie – the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth.” – Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens]

“An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth–a fact that is recognized by the law of libel.” – Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“An oyster has hardly any more reasoning power than a scientist has; and so it it is reasonably certain that this one jumped to the conclusion that the nineteen million years was a preparation for him; but that would be just like an oyster, which is the most conceited animal there is, except man. And anyway, this one could not know, at that early date, that he was only an incident in a scheme, and that there was some more in the scheme yet.” – Mark Twain, What is Man?

“and a manner so peculiar and romantic, and extraneous, and ad libitum, and heart-searching, that—that—he—he is an impressionist, I presume?” “No,” said the captain simply, “he is a Presbyterian.” – Mark Twain, The American Claimant

“And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars–all over Europe, all over the world. “Sometimes in the private interest of royal families,” Satan said, “sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose–there is no such war in the history of the race.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“and as we lay and smoked the pipe of peace and compared all this luxury with the years of tiresome city life that had gone before it, we felt that there was only one complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we had found it.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“And if I have not also shown that German is a harassing and infuriating study, my execution has been at fault, and not my intent. I heard lately of a worn and sorely tried American student who used to fly to a certain German word for relief when he could bear up under his aggravations no longer—the only word whose sound was sweet and precious to his ear and healing to his lacerated spirit. This was the word damit. It was only the sound that helped him, not the meaning; [3] and so, at last, when he learned that the emphasis was not on the first syllable, his only stay and support was gone, and he faded away and died.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“And it is all as tranquil and reposeful as dreamland, and has nothing this-worldly about it—nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon. Until the unholy train comes tearing along—which it presently does, ripping the sacred solitude to rags and tatters with its devil’s warwhoop and the roar and thunder of its rushing wheels—and” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting. 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” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“And now and then his mind reverted to his treatment by those rude Christ’s Hospital Boys, and he said, “When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teaching out of books; for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved and the heart. I will keep this diligently in my remembrance, that this day’s lesson be not lost upon me, and my people suffer thereby; for learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.” – Mark Twain

“And now I made a mistake which any donkey might make, but a sensible man never. I committed an error which I find myself repeating every day of my life. Standing right before a young lady, I said: “Dan, just look at this girl, how beautiful she is!” “I thank you more for the evident sincerity of the compliment, sir, than for the extraordinary publicity you have given to it!” This in good, pure English. We took a walk, but my spirits were very, very sadly dampened. I did not feel right comfortable for some time afterward. Why will people be so stupid as to suppose themselves the only foreigners among a crowd of ten thousand persons?” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself; for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a grateful harvest of good. Amen.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“And now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate, began. Next the ghastly ticking of a death-watch in the wall at the bed’s head made Tom shudder – it meant that somebody’s days were numbered.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“And now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often forget—or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in one way or another all men are mad.” – Mark Twain

“And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself. Her” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“…and they come without any inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances made sacred by long descent.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“And what does it amount to?” said Satan, with his evil chuckle. “Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense–to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart–if you have one–you despise yourselves for it. The first man was hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built. Drink to their perpetuation! Drink to their augmentation! Drink to–” Then he saw by our faces how much we were hurt, and he cut his sentence short and stopped chuckling…” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effect: it had intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold.” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“and when I waked up in the morning, drat it all, I had forgot what my name was.” – Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“And when it comes to beauty – and goodness too – she lays over them all. I hain’t ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door; no, I hain’t ever seen her since, but I reckon I’ve thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever I’d a thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I wouldn’t a done it or bust.” – Mark Twain

“And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth.” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Collection

“And who has prayed for Satan? In eight hundred years, who has had the common decency to pray for the one sinner who needed it most?” – Mark Twain

“And whoever will take that motto and live by it will be likely to succeed. There’s many a way to win, in this world, but none of them is worth much without good hard work back of it.” – Mark Twain

“And with that, away he went. You never see a bird work so since you was born. He laid into his work like a nigger, and the way he hove acorns into that hole for about two hours and a half was one of the most exciting and astonishing spectacles I ever struck. He” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad – Volume 01

“And yet, by ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be the Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only that, but to believe it right and as it should be.” – Mark Twain, MARK TWAIN Ultimate Collection:

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” – Mark Twain

“Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.” – Mark Twain

“Any established church is an established crime, an established slave pen.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Anybody can have ideas—the difficulty is to express them
without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that
ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.” – Mark Twain

“Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.” – Mark Twain

“Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today!” – Mark Twain

“appeared in any form. In it my purpose has been to present” – Mark Twain, Christian Science

“April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson and Other Tales

“Are you an American? No, I am not an American. I am the American.” – Mark Twain

“Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no happier than the sane. Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time, but I have been referring to the extreme cases. I have taken from this man that trumpery thing which the race regards as a Mind; I have replaced his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction; you see the result–and you criticize!” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell used it before” – Mark Twain, How to Tell a Story and Other Essays

“As a rule it will listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you. **About the mind” – Mark Twain, What is Man?

“As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.” – Mark Twain

“As I laid the book down there was a knock at the door, and my stranger came in.  I gave him a pipe and a chair, and made him welcome.  I also comforted him with a hot Scotch whisky; gave him another one; then still another—hoping always for his story. After a fourth persuader, he drifted into it himself, in a quite simple and natural way: THE STRANGER’S HISTORY I am an American.  I was born and reared in Hartford, in the State of Connecticut—anyway, just over the river, in the country.  So I am a Yankee of the Yankees—and practical; yes, and nearly barren of sentiment, I suppose—or poetry, in other words.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain

“As near as I can make out, geniuses think they know it all, and so they won’t take people’s advice, but always go their own way, which makes everybody forsake them and despise them, and that is perfectly natural. If they was humbler, and listened and tried to learn, it would be better for them.” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad

“As regards his health–and the rest of the things–the average man is what his environment and his superstitions have made him; and their function is to make him an ass. He can’t add up three or four new circumstances together and perceive what they mean; it is beyond him. He is not capable of observing for himself; he has to get everything at second-hand. If what are miscalled the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from the earth in a year.” – Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

“As the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward mid-stream it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for “style,” and were not intended to mean anything in particular. “What sail’s she carrying?” “Courses, tops’ls, and flying-jib, sir.” “Send the r’yals up! Lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of ye—foretopmaststuns’l! Lively, now!” “Aye-aye, sir!” “Shake out that maintogalans’l! Sheets and braces! NOW my hearties!” “Aye-aye, sir!” “Hellum-a-lee—hard a port! Stand by to meet her when she comes! Port, port! NOW, men! With a will! Stead-y-y-y!” “Steady it is, sir!” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“As the glare of day mellowed into twilight we looked down upon a picture which is celebrated all over the world. I think I have read about 400 times that when Mohammed was a simple camel driver he reached this point and looked down upon Damascus for the first time, and then made a certain renowned remark. He said man could enter only one paradise; he preferred to go to the one above. So he sat down there and feasted his eyes upon the earthly paradise of Damascus and then went away without entering the gates. They have erected a tower on the hill to mark the spot where he stood.” – Mark Twain

“as the Good Book says. I’m a laying up sin and suffering for us both,” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort of conduct is to the world’s credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with it.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“asked them if they supposed a nation of people ever existed, who, with a free vote in every man’s hand, would elect that a single family and its descendants should reign over it forever, whether gifted or boobies, to the exclusion of all other families—including the voter’s; and would also elect that a certain hundred families should be raised to dizzy summits of rank, and clothed on with offensive transmissible glories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation’s families—including his own . They all looked unhit, and said they didn’t know; that they had never thought about it before, and it hadn’t ever occurred to them that a nation could be so situated that every man could have a say in the government.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But, if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for duty’s sake, and invincible determination, may hope to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat.” – Mark Twain

“At first my father owned slaves, but by and by he sold them, and hired others by the year from the farmers. For a girl of fifteen he paid twelve dollars a year and gave her two linsey-wolsey frocks and a pair of “stogy” shoes—cost, a modification of nothing; for a negro woman of twenty-five, as general house servant, he paid twenty-five dollars a year and gave her shoes and the aforementioned linsey-wolsey frocks; for a strong negro woman of forty, as cook, washer, etc., he paid forty dollars a year and the customary two suits of clothes; and for an able bodied man he paid from seventy-five to a hundred dollars a year and gave him two suits of jeans and two pairs of “stogy” shoes—an outfit that cost about three dollars. But times have changed.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“At first when the Paladin heard us tell about the glories of the Royal Audience he was broken-hearted because he was not taken with us to it; next, his talk was full of what he would have done if he had been there; and within two days he was telling what he did do when he was there.” – Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“At noon I observed a bevy of nude young native women bathing in the sea, and I went and sat down on there clothes to keep them from being stolen.” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands: Hawaii in the 1860s

“At the beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity. The person who owned one was a curiosity, too. But now it is the other way about: the person who doesn’t own one is a curiosity.” – Mark Twain, The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories

“At the end of an hour we saw a far-away town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets, the first I had ever seen out of a picture. “Bridgeport?” said I, pointing. “Camelot,” said he.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner’s discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands—a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Australasian’s custom of speaking of England as “home.” It was always pretty to hear it, and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and made one seem to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother England’s old gray head.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator

“Australian History:
…. does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator – Part 7

“Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.” – Mark Twain

“Away off in the flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green sides through a shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of distance; a few birds floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other living thing was visible but some cows, and they were asleep.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“BY AND BY, WHEN WE GOT UP, WE TURNED OVER THE TRUCK THE GANG had stole off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three boxes of seegars.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.” – Mark Twain

“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. – Mark Twain

“Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.” – Mark Twain

“Be good and you will be lonesome.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.” – Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove!” – Mark Twain

“Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: ‘I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.” – Mark Twain, The Gilded Age

“Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off SOME time or other—don’t you reckon he would?” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Detective

“Because in my nature I have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to mystery.” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Detective

“bees wouldn’t sting idiots; but I didn’t believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn’t sting me.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Begin at the beginning, go on until the end, then stop.” – Mark Twain

“Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket” – which is but a matter of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention”; but the wise man saith, “Pull all your eggs in the one basket and – WATCH THAT BASKET.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“Being in love is like getting back to childhood. You’re just happy for no reasons at all.” – Mark Twain

“Being made merely in the image of God but not otherwise resembling him enough to be mistaken by anybody but a very near sighted person.” – Mark Twain

“Bekase why: would a wise man ant to live in de mid’s er such a blimblammin’ all de time? No–‘deed he wouldn’t. A wise man ‘ud take en buil’ a biler-factry; en den he could shet down de biler-factory when he want to res’.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“Between 1870 and 1905 Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) tried repeatedly, and at long intervals, to write (or dictate) his autobiography, always shelving the manuscript before he had made much progress. By 1905 he had accumulated some thirty or forty of these false starts—manuscripts that were essentially experiments, drafts of episodes and chapters; many of these have survived in the Mark Twain Papers and two other libraries. To some of these manuscripts he went so far as to assign chapter numbers that placed them early or late in a narrative which he never filled in, let alone completed. None dealt with more than brief snatches of his life story.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“Bible, and so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy circumstance;” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Part 2.

“Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.” – Mark Twain

“Boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an Injun, and singing out: “Clear the track, thar. I’m on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a-gwyne to raise.” – Mark Twain

“Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.” – Mark Twain

“Books are the liberated spirits of men.” – Mark Twain

“Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“But as soon as one is at rest in this world off he goes on something else to worry about.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“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 (Letters From the Earth)

“But hunger is pride’s master…” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“But I found out then, and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatory surroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion to suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling particulars and be happy.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“But I have never ceased to think of that girl. I have written to her, but I can not direct the epistle because her name is one of those nine-jointed Russian affairs, and there are not letters enough in our alphabet to hold out. I am not reckless enough to try to pronounce it when I am awake, but I make a stagger at it in my dreams,” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of therest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huck Finn

“But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man’s mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“But it seems to be a law of human constitution that those that deserve shall not have and those that do not deserve shall get everything that is worth having.” – Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have been a felicitous thing, for the reading public. How does it strike you? AWFUL,” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Burlesque Autobiography

“But old fools is the biggest fools there is.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii has yielded to modern research, was that grand figure of a Roman soldier, clad in complete armor; who, true to his duty, true to his proud name of a soldier of Rome, and full of the stern courage which had given to that name its glory, stood to his post by the city gate, erect and unflinching, till the hell that raged around him burned out the dauntless spirit it could not conquer. We never read of Pompeii but we think of that soldier; we can not write of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant to him the mention he so well deserves. Let us remember that he was a soldier–not a policeman –and so, praise him. Being a soldier, he staid,–because the warrior instinct forbade him to fly. Had he been a policeman he would have staid, also–because he would have been asleep.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“But that is the way we are made: we don’t reason, where we feel; we just feel.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“But the “celebrate” was an astonishing disappointment to me. If he had been behind a screen I should have supposed they were performing a surgical operation on him.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad – Volume 02

“But the cruelest habit the modern prophecy-savans have, is that one of coolly and arbitrarily fitting the prophetic shirt on to the wrong man. They do it without regard to rhyme or reason.” – Mark Twain The Innocents Abroad

“But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.” – Mark Twain

“But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and says: “Gentlemen—gentlemen! Hear me just a word—just a single word—if you please!
There’s one way yet—let’s go and dig up the corpse and look.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at you—every time. And when he prints it, in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whooping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life.” – Mark Twain How to Tell a Story and Other Essays

“but the widow she didn’t scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would behave awhile if I could.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“But there are some infelicities. Such as ‘like’ for ‘as,’ and the addition of an ‘at’ where it isn’t needed. I heard an educated gentleman say, ‘Like the flag-officer did.’ His cook or his butler would have said, ‘Like the flag-officer done.’ You hear gentlemen say, ‘Where have you been at?” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“But they (the infantry) had no use for boys of twelve and thirteen, and before I had a chance in another war, the desire to kill people to whom I had not been introduced had passed away.” – Mark Twain

“But they will build no more barricades, they will break no more soldiers’ heads with paving-stones. Louis Napoleon has taken care of all that. He is annihilating the crooked streets and building in their stead noble boulevards as straight as an arrow—avenues which a cannon ball could traverse from end to end without meeting an obstruction more irresistible than the flesh and bones of men—boulevards whose stately edifices will never afford refuges and plotting places for starving, discontented revolution breeders. Five of these great thoroughfares radiate from one ample centre—a centre which is exceedingly well adapted to the accommodation of heavy artillery. The mobs used to riot there, but they must seek another rallying-place in future. And this ingenious Napoleon paves the streets of his great cities with a smooth, compact composition of asphaltum and sand. No more barricades of flagstones—no more assaulting his Majesty’s troops with cobbles.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie. We can tell them the moment we see them. They always throw out a few feelers; they never cast themselves adrift till they have sounded every individual and know that he has not traveled. Then they open their throttle valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar, and blaspheme the sacred name of Truth! Their central idea, their grand aim, is to subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insignificant and humble in the blaze of their cosmopolitan glory! They will not let you know anything. They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they laugh unfeelingly at your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand the statements of your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities; they deride your most trusted authors and demolish the fair images they have set up for your willing worship with the pitiless ferocity of the fanatic iconoclast! But still I love the Old Travelers. I love them for their witless platitudes, for their supernatural ability to bore, for their delightful asinine vanity, for their luxuriant fertility of imagination, for their startling, their brilliant, their overwhelming mendacity!” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“But when weariness finally forced him to be silent, he was no longer of use to his tormentors, and they sought amusement elsewhere” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian’s daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?” – Mark Twain

“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?” – Mark Twain

“But who shall tell how many ages it seemed to this prisoner?” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody.” – Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“But, don’t you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him.” – Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

“Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.” – Mark Twain

“By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small “independent” farmers, artisans, etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respectworthy, and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“by and by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the stars and drift-logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain’t no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can’t stay so, you soon get over it.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity – another man’s, I mean.” – Mark Twain

“Camelot,” Said he. – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Camelot—Camelot,” said I to myself.  “I don’t seem to remember hearing of it before.  Name of the asylum, likely.” It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as Sunday.  The air was full of the smell of flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering of birds, and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on.  The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side in the grass—wheels that apparently had a tire as broad as one’s hand. Presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old, with a cataract of golden hair streaming down over her shoulders, came along. Around her head she wore a hoop of flame-red poppies. It was as sweet an outfit as ever I saw, what there was of it.  She walked indolently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her innocent face.  The circus man paid no attention to her; didn’t even seem to see her.  And she—she was no more startled at his fantastic make-up than if she was used to his like every day of her life.  She was going by as indifferently as she might have gone by a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice me, then there was a change!  Up went her hands, and she was turned to stone;” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Can any plausible excuse be furnished for the crime of creating the human race?” – Mark Twain

“Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.” – Mark Twain

“Cave is a good word…. The memory of a cave I used to know was always in my mind, with its lofty passages, its silence and solitude, its shrouding gloom, its sepulchral echoes, its fleeting lights, and more than all, its sudden revelations….”v

“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” – Mark Twain

“Certainly. Of course. That’s part of it. And always coming to school or when we’re going home, you’re to walk with me, when there ain’t anybody looking – and you choose me and I choose you at parties, because that’s the way you do when you’re engaged.” – Mark Twain

“Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!” – Mark Twain, Those Extraordinary Twins

“Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain –adults and wise persons never speak it.” – Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Children and fools always speak the truth.” – Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Children have but little charity for each other’s defects.” – Mark Twain

“Choosing not to read is like closing an open door to paradise” – Mark Twain

“Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.” – Mark Twain

“Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified way. His idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but with a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective chief magistrate. He believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive; finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house, and “Tom VII, or Tom XI, or Tom XIV by the grace of God King,” would sound as well as it would when applied to the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court

“Classic” – a book which people praise and don’t read. – Mark Twain

“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.” – Mark Twain

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” – Mark Twain

“Come! surely you’ve got a heart hidden away somewhere; open it up; give it air; show at least some little corner of it.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Comparison is the death of joy.” – Mark Twain

“Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Concerning Man–he is too large a subject to be treated as a whole; so I will merely discuss a detail or two of him at this time. I desire to contemplate him from this point of view–this premise: that he was not made for any useful purpose, for the reason that he hasn’t served any; that he was most likely not even made intentionally; and that his working himself up out of the oyster bed to his present position was probably matter of surprise and regret to the Creator. . . . For his history, in all climes, all ages and all circumstances, furnishes oceans and continents of proof that of all the creatures that were made he is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one–the solitary one–that possesses malice.   That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices–the most hateful. That one thing puts him below the rats, the grubs, the trichinae. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Autobiography: Volume 2

“Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn’t any. But this wrongs the jackass.” – Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“Conformity—the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority.” – Mark Twain

“Confound it, it’s foolish, Tom” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“congress – that great, benevolent asylum for the helpless” – Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.” – Mark Twain

“Consider well the proportion of things: it is better to be a young June bug than an old bird of paradise.” – Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens)

“Considering the elaborate circumstantiality of detail observable in the item, it seems to me that it ought to contain more information than it does. On” – Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” – Mark Twain

“Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can’t do it, go and borrow one.” – Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!-Incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who “didn’t know what fear was,” we ought always to add the flea-and put him at the head of the procession.” – Mark Twain

“Courts musn’t interfere and separate families if they could help it. Said he’d druther not take a child away from its father.” – Mark Twain

“Credit, that rare bird of security and peace, rested with none, but stood with upraised wings, ready to fly off at the first rumor of suspicion.” – Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 2

“Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.” – Mark Twain

“Damascus, is simply an oasis, that is what it is. For four thousand years its waters have not gone dry or its fertility failed. Now we can understand why the city has existed so long. It could not die. So long as its waters remain to it away out there in the midst of that howling desert, so long will Damascus live to bless the sight of the tired and thirsty wayfarer.

Though old as history itself, thou art fresh as the breath of spring, blooming as thine own orange flower, O Damascus, the pearl of the East!”.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Damn these human beings! If I had invented them I would go hide my head in a bag.” – Mark Twain

“Dan said the other day to the guide, “Enough, enough, enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Dan’s voice rose on the air: “Oh, bring some soap, why don’t you!” The reply was Italian. Dan resumed: “Soap, you know—soap. That is what I want—soap. S-o-a-p, soap; s-o-p-e, soap; s-o-u-p, soap. Hurry up! I don’t know how you Irish spell it, but I want it. Spell it to suit yourself, but fetch it. I’m freezing.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad – Complete Version

“Darwin abolished special creations, contributed the Origin of Species and hitched all life together in one unbroken procession.” – Mark Twain

“Dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don’t take hold, they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the thing. Pictures can make dates stick.” – Mark Twain

“Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle?—the burning of Rome in Nero’s time, for instance? Why, it would merely say, ‘Town burned down; no insurance; boy brast a window, fireman brake his neck!’ Why, THAT ain’t a picture!” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Dear, dear, it only shows that there is nothing diviner about a king than there is about a tramp, after all. He is just a cheap and hollow artificiality when you don’t know he is a king. But reveal his quality, and dear me it takes your very breath away to look at him. I reckon we are all fools. Born so, no doubt.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Death is to life as heaven is to hell they’re both dependent on each other” – Mark Twain

“DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o’clock this morning. He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters hereafter.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain

“December is the toughest month of the year. Others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, October, August, and February.” – Mark Twain

“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” – Mark Twain

“Did you think you had educated the superstition out of those people?’
‘I certainly did think it.’
‘Well, then, you may unthink it.” – Mark Twain

“Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet—no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“diplomacy is simply the name we have agreed to give to lying about national affairs. I” – Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die, Vol.1

“Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest-fst! it was as bright as glory and you’d have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about, away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you’d hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs, where it’s long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Distance lends enchantment to the view.” – Mark Twain

“Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the South, and I’ve lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man’s a coward.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Do not bring your dog. (advice for attending a funeral)” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Do right for your own sake, and be happy in knowing that your neighbor will certainly share in the benefits resulting.” – Mark Twain, What is Man?

“Do something everyday that you don’t want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.” – Mark Twain

“Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” – Mark Twain

“Do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is certain.” – Mark Twain

“Does Jane Austen do her work too remorselessly well? For me, I mean? Maybe that is it. She makes me detest all her people, without reserve. Is that her intention? It is not believable. Then is it her purpose to make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters? That could be. That would be high art. It would be worth while, too. Some day I will examine the other end of her books and see.” – Mark Twain, Who Is Mark Twain?

“Dogs go to heaven” – Mark Twain

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” – Mark Twain

“Don’t explain your author, read him right and he explains himself.” – Mark Twain

“Don’t go around thinking the world owes you a living. It was here first.” – Mark Twain

“Don’t let school get in the way of your education.” – Mark Twain

“Don’t let school interfere with your education.” – Mark Twain

“Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.” – Mark Twain

“Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.” – Mark Twain

“Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.” – Mark Twain

“Don’t wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to her bitter reality” – Mark Twain

“Don’t you worry your pretty little mind. People throw rocks at things that shine and life makes love look hard” – Mark Twain

“down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat. “I never did see” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Drag your thoughts away from your troubles … by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.” – Mark Twain

“Drag your thoughts away
from your troubles…
by the ears, by the heels,
or any other way you can manage it.” – Mark Twain

“Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.” – Mark Twain

“During the gold rush its a good time to be in the pick and shovel business” – Mark Twain

“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.” – Mark Twain

“Each man’s preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him.” – Mark Twain

“Each of us knows it all, and knows he knows it all—the rest, to a man, are fools and eluded. One man knows there is a hell, the next one knows there isn’t; one man knows monarchy is best, the next one knows it isn’t; one man knows high tariff is right, the next man knows it isn’t; one man knows there are witches, the next one knows there aren’t; one sect knows its religion is the only true one, there are sixty-four thousand five hundred million sects that know it isn’t so.” – Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“Each of you, for himself or herself, by himself or herself, and on his or her own responsibility, must speak. It is a solemn and weighty responsibility and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government or politician. Each must decide for himself or herself alone what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man, to decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor. It is traitorous both against yourself and your country.

Let men label you as they may, if you alone of all the nation decide one way, and that way be the right way by your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country, hold up your head for you have nothing to be ashamed of.

It doesn’t matter what the press says. It doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. It doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. Republics are founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe in. no matter the odds or consequences.

When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move. Your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world:

“No, you move.” – Mark Twain

“Each place has its own advantages – heaven for the climate, and hell for the society.” – Mark Twain

“Each time in fiction or in history I meet a well-defined personality I am personally interested in him, for we know each other already, because we met on the river.” – Mark Twain

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” – Mark Twain

“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.” – Mark Twain, Notebook

“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.” – Mark Twain

“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.” – Mark Twain

“eggs.” “You’re a liar!” “You’re another.” “You’re a fighting liar and dasn’t take it up.” “Aw—take a walk!” “Say—if you give me much more of your sass I’ll take and bounce a rock off’n your head.” “Oh, of course you will.” “Well I will.” “Well why don’t you do it then? What do you keep saying you will for? Why don’t you do it? It’s because you’re afraid.” “I ain’t afraid.” “You are.” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Collection

“Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothing of better than another.”― Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

“Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information.” – Mark Twain

“Emperors, kings, artisians, peasens, big people—at the bottom we are all alike and all the same; all just alike on the inside, and when our clothes are off, nobody can tell which of us is which.” – Mark Twain, What is Man ? and Other Essays

“Eschew surplusage.” – Mark Twain

“Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys. We were not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. Knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would not endure discontentment with His plans.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Eventually, I sickened of people, myself included, who didn’t think enough of themselves to make something of themselves- people who did only what they had to and never what they could have done. I learned from them the infected loneliness that comes at the end of every misspent day. I knew I could do better.” – Mark Twain

“Every man feels that his experience is unlike that of anybody else and therefore he should write it down—he finds also that everybody else has thought and felt on some points precisely as he has done, and therefore he should write it down.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind it if you want to see it.” – Mark Twain

“Every man is born to one possession which out values all his others – his last breath.” – Mark Twain

“Every man is in his own person the whole human race without a detail lacking….I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed through the heads of millions and millions of men before I was born.” – Mark Twain

“Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print — I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:

Gretchen: “Wilhelm, where is the turnip?”

Wilhelm: “She has gone to the kitchen.”

Gretchen: “Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?”

Wilhelm. “It has gone to the opera.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody” – Mark Twain

“Every one knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“Every person is a book, each year a chapter,” – Mark Twain

“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.” – Mark Twain

“Everybody granted that if “Tom” were white and free it would be unquestionably right to punish him–it would be no loss to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life–that was quite another matter. As soon as the Governor understood the case, he pardoned Tom at once, and the creditors sold him down the river.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“Everybody has heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen hundred thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“Everybody lies…every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception.” – Mark Twain

“Everybody lies—every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey deception—and purposely. Even in sermons—but that is a platitude. In” – Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Everything has its limit – iron ore cannot be educated into gold.” – Mark Twain

“Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in Heaven.” – Mark Twain

“…everything in a dream is more deep and strong and real than is ever its pale imitation in the unreal life which is ours when we go awake and clothed with our artificial selves in this vague and dull-tinted artificial world.” – Mark Twain, My Platonic Sweetheart

“Everything in moderation except whiskey, and sometimes too much whiskey is just enough.” – Mark Twain

“Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” – Mark Twain

“Evidence … proves that prohibition only drives drunkenness behind closed doors and into dark places, and it does not cure it or even diminish it.” – Mark Twain

“Evolution is a blind giant who rolls a snowball down a hill. The ball is made of flakes—circumstances. They contribute to the mass without knowing it. They adhere without intention, and without foreseeing what is to result. When they see the result they marvel at the monster ball and wonder how the contriving of it came to be originally thought out and planned. Whereas there was no such planning, there was only a law: the ball once started, all the circumstances that happened to lie in its path would help to build it, in spite of themselves.” – Mark Twain

“Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on ‘The Survival of the Fittest.’ These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.” – Mark Twain

“Except for my daughters, I have not grieved for any death as I have grieved for his. His was a great and beautiful spirit, he was a man – all man, from his crown to his footsoles. My reverence for him was deep and genuine.” – Mark Twain

“Experience is an author’s most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.” – Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.” – Mark Twain

“Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

“explosive and was expected to blow him up and” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“Expression, expression is the thing – in art. I do not care what it expresses, and I cannot most always sometimes tell, generally, but expression is what I worship, it is what I glory in, with all my impetuous nature.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags—that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction. Tom’s bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in an instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner. The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of the tick. So he put Joe’s slate on the desk and drew a line down the middle of it from top to bottom.” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Collection

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.” – Mark Twain

“Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.” – Mark Twain

“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

“Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.” – Mark Twain

“Familiarity breeds contempt and children.” – Mark Twain

“Fear drove many on deck that were used to avoiding the night winds and the spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the night, and it seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the wild tempest and see the peril that threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral cabins, under the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors that were abroad on the ocean. And once out—once where they could see the ship struggling in the strong grasp of the storm—once where they could hear the shriek of the winds and face the driving spray and look out upon the majestic picture the lightnings disclosed, they were prisoners to a fierce fascination they could not resist, and so remained. It was a wild night—and a very, very long one.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar” – Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson

“Fifthly, I would do away with those great long compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments. To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are more easily received and digested when they come one at a time than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“Finally she started up, and said she had found a way out. Tom was almost suffocated by the joy of this sudden good news. Roxana said: “Here is de plan, en she’ll win, sure. I’s a nigger, en nobody ain’t gwine to doubt it dat hears me talk. I’s wuth six hund’d dollahs. Take en sell me, en pay off dese gamblers.” Tom was dazed. He was not sure he had heard aright. He was dumb for a moment; then he said: “Do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?” “Ain’t you my chile? En does you know anything dat a mother won’t do for her chile?” – Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Mark Twain

“First get the facts, you can distort them later” – Mark Twain

“First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn’t make enough for
them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a
dancing-school; but they didn’t know no more how to dance than a kangaroo
does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and
pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellocution;
but they didn’t yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a
solid good cussing, and made them skip out.” – Mark Twain

“Five and twenty sturdy budges, bulks, files, clapperdogeons and maunders, counting the dells and doxies and other morts. Most are here, the rest are wandering eastward, along the winter lay. We follow at dawn.” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself.” – Mark Twain

“Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“for “afternoon”] and I’ll just be obleeged to make him work, to-morrow, to punish him. It’s mighty hard to make him work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I’ve GOT” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“For a little while, hope made a show of reviving – not with any reason to back it, but only because it is its nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age and familiarity with failure.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“for business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.”

“FOR EVERY GRAIN OF SAND IN OUR WORLD, THERE ARE ONE MILLION STARS IN THE UNIVERSE.” – Mark Twain

“For he did not seem to know any way to do a person a kindness but by killing him.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“for he seemed only able to inhale it by thimblefuls,” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“For I never care to do a thing in a quiet way; it’s got to be theatrical or I don’t take any interest in it.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“For instance, take this sample: he has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights, the one ecstasy that stands first and foremost in the heart of every individual of his race — and of ours — sexual intercourse!

It is as if a lost and perishing person in a roasting desert should be told by a rescuer he might choose and have all longed-for things but one, and he should elect to leave out water!” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon–laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution- these can lift at a colossal humbug- push it a little – weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” – Mark Twain

“Foreordain it? No. The man’s circumstances and environment order it. His first act determines the second and all that follow after. But suppose, for argument’s sake, that the man should skip one of these acts; an apparently trifling one, for instance; suppose that it had been appointed that on a certain day, at a certain hour and minute and second and fraction of a second he should go to the well, and he didn’t go. That man’s career would change utterly, from that moment; thence to the grave it would be wholly different from the career which his first act as a child had arranged for him. Indeed, it might be that if he had gone to the well he would have ended his career on a throne, and that omitting to do it would set him upon a career that would lead to beggary and a pauper’s grave. For instance: if at any time–say in boyhood–Columbus had skipped the triflingest little link in the chain of acts projected and made inevitable by his first childish act, it would have changed his whole subsequent life, and he would have become a priest and died obscure in an Italian village, and America would not have been discovered for two centuries afterward. I know this. To skip any one of the billion acts in Columbus’s chain would have wholly changed his life. I have examined his billion of possible careers, and in only one of them occurs the discovery of America.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.” – Mark Twain

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” – Mark Twain

“Framed in black moldings on the wall, other works of arts, conceived and committed on the premises, by the young ladies; being grim black-and-white crayons; landscapes, mostly: lake, solitary sail-boat, petrified clouds, pre-geological trees on shore, anthracite precipice;” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Germany, in the summer, is the perfection of the beautiful, but nobody has understood, and realized, and enjoyed the utmost possibilities of this soft and peaceful beauty unless he has voyaged down the Neckar on a raft. The motion of a raft is the needful motion; it is gentle, and gliding, and smooth, and noiseless; it calms down all feverish activities, it soothes to sleep all nervous hurry and impatience; under its restful influence all the troubles and vexations and sorrows that harass the mind vanish away, and existence becomes a dream, a charm, a deep and tranquil ecstasy. How it contrasts with hot and perspiring pedestrianism, and dusty and deafening railroad rush, and tedious jolting behind tired horses over blinding white roads!” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.” – Mark Twain

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.” – Mark Twain

“Git up and hump yourself, Jim! There ain’t a minute to lose. They’re after us!” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep ’til noon.” – Mark Twain

“Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.” – Mark Twain

“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.” – Mark Twain

“Go to heaven for the climate” – Mark Twain

“God Almighty made us all, and some He gives eyes that’s blind, and some He gives eyes that can see, and I reckon it ain’t none of our lookout what He done it for; it’s all right, or He’d ‘a’ fixed it some other way.” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Detective

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.” – Mark Twain

“God knows I never had shade nor shadow of a doubt of my petrified and indestructible honesty until now—and now, under the very first big and real temptation, I—Edward, it is my belief that this town’s honesty is as rotten as mine is; as rotten as yours.  It is a mean town, a hard, stingy town, and hasn’t a virtue in the world but this honesty it is so celebrated for and so conceited about; and so help me, I do believe that if ever the day comes that its honesty falls under great temptation, its grand reputation will go to ruin like a house of cards.” – Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

“God made the Sea of Galilee and its surroundings as they are. Is it the province of Mr. Grimes to improve upon the work?” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“God save you from ever being
obliged to beat in a game of chess, whose stake is your life, you having
but four poor pawns and pieces and your adversary with his full force
unshorn. But if you are, provided you have any strength with breadth of
will, do not despair. Though mesmeric power may not save you, it may
help you; try it at all events.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.” – Mark Twain

“gone, you see, yet finding” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapters 1-5

“Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.” – Mark Twain

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” – Mark Twain

“Good gracious! Anybody hurt?”
“No’m. Killed a nigger.”
“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.” – Mark Twain

“Good-bye…if we meet…” – Mark Twain

“Great books are weighted and measured by their style and matter, and not the trimmings and shadings of their grammar.” – Mark Twain

“great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.” – Mark Twain

“Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, apparently. What supports its poverty-stricken people or its Government, is a mystery.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” – Mark Twain

“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.” – Mark Twain

“had gradually come to have a realizing sense of the fact that Slade was a man whose heart and hands and soul were steeped in the blood of offenders against his dignity; a man who awfully avenged all injuries, affront, insults or slights, of whatever kind—on the spot if he could, years afterward if lack of earlier opportunity compelled it; a man whose hate tortured him day and night till vengeance appeased it—and not an ordinary vengeance either, but his enemy’s absolute death—nothing less; a man whose face would light up with a terrible joy when he surprised a foe and had him at a disadvantage. A high and efficient servant of the Overland, an outlaw among” – Mark Twain, Roughing It : Premium Edition -Illustrated

“Had I never loved, I never would have been unhappy; but I turn to Him who can save, and if His wisdom does not will my expected union, I know He will give me strength to bear my lot.” – Mark Twain, The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories

“had studied law an entire week, and then given it up because it was so prosy and tiresome.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain’t that a big enough majority in any town?” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Hamlet’s soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare. Ah, it’s sublime, sublime! Always fetches the house. I haven’t got it in the book—I’ve only got one volume—but I reckon I can piece it out from memory. I’ll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call it back from recollection’s vaults.” So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would sigh, and next he’d let on to drop a tear. It was beautiful to see him. By and by he got it. He told us to give attention. Then he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through his speech, he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever I see before. This is the speech—I learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king: To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature’s second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. There’s the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The law’s delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i’ the adage, Is sicklied o’er with care, And all the clouds that lowered o’er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery—go! Well,” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Hang the boy, can’t I never learn anything? Ain’t he played tricks on me enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can;t learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what’s coming? He ‘pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it’s all down again and I can’t hit him a lick. I ain’t doing my duty by that boy, and that’s the Lord’s truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I’m a-laying up sin and suffering for the both of us, I know. He’s full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he’s my own dead sister’s boy, poor thing, and I ain’t got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart almost breaks. Well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says, and I reckon it’s so. He’ll play hooky this evening, and I’ll just be obleeged to make him work tomorrow, to punish him. It’s mighty hard to make him work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I’ve got to do some of my duty by him, or I’ll be the ruination of the child.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“hardly any strength left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we are in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We struck for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, hanging on from” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Having faith is believing in something you just know ain’t true.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“He begged hard, and said he couldn’t play—a plausible excuse, but too thin; there wasn’t a musician in the country that could.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“he could be suspected of knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be comfortable in the midst of this gossip. It kept him in a cold” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“He denounced him openly as a charlatan–a fraud with no valuable knowledge of any kind, or powers beyond those of an ordinary and rather inferior human being.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“He got home pretty late that night, and when he climbed cautiously in at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt; and when she saw the state his clothes were in her resolution to turn his Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine in its firmness. CHAPTER” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“he got up and moved in clouds and darkness out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in at the other.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“He had a dream and it shot him.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“He had a rat!” Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don’t cost nothing, and it’s just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There warn’t no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was.” – Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“He had another conspicuous characteristic, and it was the father of those which I have just spoken of. This was an intense lust for approval. He was so eager to be approved, so girlishly anxious to be approved by anybody and everybody, without discrimination, that he was commonly ready to forsake his notions, opinions and convictions at a moment’s notice in order to get the approval of any person who disagreed with them. I wish to be understood as reserving his fundamental principles all the time. He never forsook those to please anybody. Born and reared among slaves and slave-holders, he was yet an abolitionist from his boyhood to his death. He was always truthful; he was always sincere; he was always honest and honorable. But in light matters—matters of small consequence, like religion and politics and such things—he never acquired a conviction that could survive a disapproving remark from a cat.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam, he was just all mud.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it, namely, that, in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.” – Mark Twain

“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” – Mark Twain , The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while—plenty of company—and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village. Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“He had had much experience of physicians, and said ‘the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not’.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“…[H]e had just acquired… a valued novelty in whistling… [H]e strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet – no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“He has one code of morals for himself, and quite another for his children. He requires his children to deal justly—and gently—with offenders, and forgive them seventy-and-seven times; whereas he deals neither justly nor gently with anyone, and he did not forgive the ignorant and thoughtless first pair of juveniles even their first small offense and say, “You may go free this time, I will give you another chance.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“he hoped she would be happy, and never regret having driven her poor boy out into the unfeeling world to suffer and die.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“He is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there, he bides in hell and is content; for in that place he will find neither abbot nor yet bishop.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“He knows that in the whole history of the race of men no single great and high and beneficent thing was ever done for the souls and bodies, the hearts and the brains, of the children of this world, but a Mugwump started it and Mugwumps carried it to victory. And their names are the stateliest in history: Washington, Garrison, Galileo, Luther, Christ. Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world–and never will.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Essays of Mark Twain

“He lay down upon a sumptuous divan, and proceeded to instruct himself with honest zeal.” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn’t a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn’t scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I’d die if I couldn’t scratch. Well, I’ve noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain’t sleepy—if you are anywheres where it won’t do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says:” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“He pointed to the money, and said:

He presently grew lonesome, and started out for recreation. He ranged the whole boat—visited every part of it, with an advance guard of fleeing people in front of him and a voiceless vacancy behind him; and when his owner captured him at last, those two were the only visible beings anywhere; everybody else was in hiding, and the boat was a solitude.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“He said if he ever got out this time he wouldn’t ever be a prisoner again, not for a salary.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“He said if I warn’t so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“He said that man’s heart was the only bad heart in the animal kingdom; that man was the only animal capable of feeling malice, envy, vindictiveness, revengefulness, hatred, selfishness, the only animal that loves drunkenness, almost the only animal that could endure personal uncleanliness and a filthy habitation, the sole animal in whom was fully developed the base instinct called patriotism, the sole animal that robs, persecutes, oppresses and kills members of his own tribe, the sole animal that steals and enslaves the members of any tribe.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“He says, naïvely, outspokenly, and without suggestion of embarrassment: “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” You see, it is only another way of saying, “I the Lord thy God am a small God; a small God, and fretful about small things.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

“he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“He told me what it was, and I see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“He was a good enough sort of cretur, and hadn’t no harm in him, and was just a genius, as the papers said, which wasn’t his fault.” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad

“He was a poet with a rough skin: one whose sturdiness was more the result of external circumstances than of intrinsic nature. Too kindly constituted to be very provident, he was yet not imprudent. He had a quiet humorousness of disposition, not out of keeping with a frequent melancholy, the general expression of his countenance being one of abstraction. Like Walt Whitman he felt as his years increased— ‘I foresee too much; it means more than I thought.” – Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die, Vol.1

“He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year old, and had a very red face. Everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he’d attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn’t wait now because he’d come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, “Meat first and spoon vittles to top off on.” He see me, and rode up and says:”Whar’d you come f’m boy? You prepared to die?” Then he rode on. I was scared, but a man says: “He don’t mean nothing; he’s always a-carryin’ on like that when he’s drunk. He’s the best-naturedest old fool in Arkansaw–never hurt nobody, drunk no sober.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“He was endowed with a stupidity which by the least little stretch would go around the globe four times and tie.” – Mark Twain

“He was full of ironical admiration of his childishness and innocence in letting a wandering and characterless and scandalous American load him up with deceptions of so transparent a character that they ought not to have deceived the housecat. On the other hand, he was remorselessly severe upon me for beguiling him, by studied and discreditable artifice, into bragging and boasting about his poor game in the presence of a professional expert disguised in lies and frauds, who could empty more balls in billiard pockets in an hour than he could empty into a basket in a day.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though—and loathed him.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to his treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying:

“Brother, go find your brother!”

He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each other.” ― Samuel Clemmons, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.” – Mark Twain

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Friedrich Nietzsche * * *” – Mark Twain

“He will leave Bibles to eat bricks, he will leave bricks to eat bottles, he will leave bottles to eat clothing, he will leave clothing to eat cats, he will leave cats to eat oysters, he will leave oysters to eat ham, he will leave ham to eat sugar, he will leave sugar to eat pie, he will leave pie to eat potatoes, he will leave potatoes to eat bran; he will leave bran to eat hay, he will leave hay to eat oats, he will leave oats to eat rice, for he was mainly raised on it. There is nothing whatever that he will not eat but European butter, and he would eat that if he could taste it.” – Mark Twain, The Stolen White Elephant

“He worked up his old battles and tricked them out with fresh splendors; also with new terrors, for he added artillery now.” – Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“He would be a consul no doubt by and by, at some foreign port, of the language of which he was ignorant; though if ignorance of language were a qualification he might have been a consul at home.” – Mark Twain

“he would now have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whaterver a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why construcing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill, is work, whilst rolling nine-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service that would turn it into work, then they would resign.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“He would now have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Health is a habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.” – Mark Twain

“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” – Mark Twain

“Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one… that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.” – Mark Twain

“heir did go to America, with the Fairfax heir or about the same time—but disappeared—somewhere in the wilds of Virginia, got married, end began to breed savages for the Claimant” – Mark Twain, The American Claimant

“Helen Keller was to have been present last night but she is ill in bed, and has been ill in bed during several weeks, through overwork in the interest of the blind, the deaf, and the dumb. I need not go into any particulars about Helen Keller. She is fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakspeare, and the rest of the immortals. She will be as famous a thousand years from now as she is to-day.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“Hello Huckleberry!”
“Hello, yourself, and see how you like it.”
“What’s that you got?”
“Dead cat.”
“Lemme see him, Huck. My, he’s pretty stiff. Where’d you get him?”
“Bought him off’n a boy.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Her religion made her inwardly content and joyous; and” – Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc – Vol I

“Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling- book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn’t stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, “Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;” and “Don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry—set up straight;” and pretty soon she would say, “Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry—why don’t you try to behave?” Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn’t say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do no good.” – Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Here a captive heart busted.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gaspings and shriekings and suffocatings.” – Mark Twain, How to Tell a Story and Other Essays

“Here they come, a tilting! Five hundred mailed and belted knights on bicycles!” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Herodotus says, “Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.” – Mark Twain

“Herschel removed the speckled tent-roof from the world and exposed the immeasurable deeps of space, dim-flecked with fleets of colossal suns sailing their billion-leagued remoteness.” – Mark Twain

“High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.” – Mark Twain

“him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can’t do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series. I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the delicate art of the forest, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples. Cooper was a sailor — a naval officer; yet he gravely tells us how a vessel, driving towards a lee shore in a gale, is steered for a particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn’t that neat? For several years Cooper was daily in the society of artillery, and he ought to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet or so — and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls. Now in one place he loses some “females” — as he always calls women — in the edge of a wood near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to show off the delicate art of the forest before the” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain: Collection of 51 Classic Works with analysis and historical background (Annotated and Illustrated)

“His grandeurs were stricken valueless: they seemed to fall away from him like rotten rags. The procession moved on, and still on, through ever augmenting splendours and ever augmenting tempests of welcome; but to Tom Canty they were as if they had not been. He neither saw nor heard. Royalty had lost its grace and sweetness; its pomps were become a reproach. Remorse was eating his heart out. He said, “Would God I were free of my captivity!” – Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an American person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values. It consists — utterly and entirely — of diversions which he cares next to nothing about, here in the earth, yet is quite sure he will like them in heaven. Isn’t it curious? Isn’t it interesting? You must not think I am exaggerating, for it is not so. I will give you details.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

“His wife, Electra, was a capable help meet, although—like himself— a dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. The first thing she did, after her marriage—child as she was, aged only nineteen— was to buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay down the cash for it—twenty-five dollars, all her fortune. Saladin had less, by fifteen. She instituted a vegetable garden there, got it farmed on shares by the nearest neighbor, and made it pay her a hundred per cent. a year. Out of Saladin’s first year’s wage she put thirty dollars in the savings-bank, sixty out of his second, a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty out of his fourth. His wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and meantime two children had arrived and increased the expenses, but she banked two hundred a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth. When she had been married seven years she built and furnished a pretty and comfortable two-thousand-dollar house in the midst of her garden-acre, paid half of the money down and moved her family in. Seven years later she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out earning its living.” – Mark Twain, The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” – Mark Twain

“History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.” – Mark Twain

“Hi-YI! YOU’RE up a stump, ain’t you!” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Homely truth is unpalatable.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, “Give me masturbation or give me death.” Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, “To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion.” In another place this experienced observer has said, “There are times when I prefer it to sodomy.” Robinson Crusoe says, “I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art.” Queen Elizabeth said, “It is the bulwark of virginity.” Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, “A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush.” The immortal Franklin has said, “Masturbation is the best policy.” Michelangelo and all of the other old masters–“old masters,” I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction–have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, “Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse.” Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time–“None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.” – Mark Twain, On Masturbation

“Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.” – Mark Twain

“Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.” – Mark Twain

“How blind and unreasoning and arbitrary are some of the laws of nature – the most of them, in fact!” – Mark Twain, The Double-Barrelled Detective: Dual Language Reader

“How empty is theory in the presence of fact!” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.” – Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

“How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.” – Mark Twain

“How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary—but always whiskey! Such is the case. Look history over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey—I mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up an old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts up politics and a railroad; all hands turn to and build a church and a jail—and” – Mark Twain Life on the Mississippi

“How times changed, between the older ages and the new! Some seventeen or eighteen centuries ago, the ignorant men of Rome were wont to put Christians in the arena of the Coliseum yonder, and turn the wild beasts in upon them for a show. It was for a lesson as well. It was to teach the people to abhor and fear the new doctrine the followers of Christ were teaching. The beasts tore the victims limb from limb and made poor mangled corpses of them in the twinkling of an eye. But when the Christians came into power, when the holy Mother Church became mistress of the barbarians, she taught them the error of their ways by no such means. No, she put them in this pleasant Inquisition and pointed to the Blessed Redeemer, who was so gentle and so merciful toward all men, and they urged the barbarians to love him; and they did all they could to persuade them to love and honor him–first by twisting their thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by nipping their flesh with pincers–red-hot ones, because they are the most comfortable in cold weather; then by skinning them alive a little, and finally by roasting them in public. They always convinced those barbarians. The true religion, properly administered, as the good Mother Church used to administer it, is very, very soothing. It is wonderfully persuasive, also. There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in an Inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened, civilized people. It is a great pity the playful Inquisition is no more.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“However, I assured her that if he found he couldn’t stand it I would fix him so that he could.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome super-abundance of that sort of time which is not money.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world” – Mark Twain The Innocents Abroad

“Human nature is all alike.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“Human pride is not worthwhile; there is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it.” – Mark Twain

“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.” – Mark Twain

“Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.” – Mark Twain

“Humor is tragedy plus time.” – Mark Twain

“Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.” – Mark Twain

“I admit that I treed a rheumatic grandfather of mine in the winter of 1850. He was old and inexpert in climbing trees, but with the heartless brutality that is characteristic of me I ran him out of the front door in his night-shirt at the point of a shotgun, and caused him to bowl up a maple tree, where he remained all night, while I emptied shot into his legs. I did this because he snored. I will do it again if I ever have another grandfather.” – Mark Twain

“I ain’t everybody, and I can’t stand it. It’s awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy – I don’t take no interest in vittles, that way. […] Looky-here, Tom, being rich ain’t what it’s cracked out to be. It’s just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time. […] now you just take my sheer of it along with your’n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes – not many times, becuz I don’t give a dern for a thing ‘thout it’s tollable hard to git. […] No, Tom, I won’t be rich, and I won’t live in them cussed smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and I’ll stick to ‘em, too.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“I ain’t opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain’t no other way, but there ain’t no use in WASTING it on them.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I allowed silence to accumulate while I got my impressiveness together,” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.” – Mark Twain – Mark Twain

“I am a border-ruffian from the State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption. In me, you have Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the combination which makes the perfect man.” – Mark Twain, Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims: And Other Speeches

“I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.”

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.” – Mark Twain

“I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn’t…The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.” – Mark Twain

“I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.” – Mark Twain, What is Man?

“I am only human, although I regret it.” – Mark Twain

“I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.” – Mark Twain

“I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out and independent verdict upon a fashion in clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics, or religion, or any other matter that is projected into the field of our notice and interest, is a most rare thing — if it has indeed ever existed.”― Mark Twain, Corn Pone Opinions

“I am prepared to meet anyone, but whether anyone is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter”

“I am quite sure … I have no race prejudice, and I think I have no color prejudices, nor caste prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All I care to know is that a man is a human being—this is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.” – Mark Twain

“I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.” – Mark Twain

“I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being-that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse. I have no special regard for Satan; but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French. Without” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain: Collection of 51 Classic Works with analysis and historical background (Annotated and Illustrated)

“I am reminded, now, of one of these complaints of the cookery made by a passenger. The coffee had been steadily growing more and more execrable for the space of three weeks, till at last it had ceased to be coffee altogether and had assumed the nature of mere discolored water—so this person said. He said it was so weak that it was transparent an inch in depth around the edge of the cup. As he approached the table one morning he saw the transparent edge—by means of his extraordinary vision long before he got to his seat. He went back and complained in a high-handed way to Capt. Duncan. He said the coffee was disgraceful. The Captain showed his. It seemed tolerably good. The incipient mutineer was more outraged than ever, then, at what he denounced as the partiality shown the captain’s table over the other tables in the ship. He flourished back and got his cup and set it down triumphantly, and said:

“Just try that mixture once, Captain Duncan.”

He smelt it—tasted it—smiled benignantly—then said:

“It is inferior—for coffee—but it is pretty fair tea.”

The humbled mutineer smelt it, tasted it, and returned to his seat. He had made an egregious ass of himself before the whole ship. He did it no more. After that he took things as they came. That was me.”
― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“I am willing to be a literary thief if it has so been ordained; I am even willing to be caught robbing the ancient dead alongside of Hopkinson Smith, for he is my friend and a good fellow, and I think would be as honest as any one if he could do it without occasioning remark; but I am not willing to antedate his crimes by fifteen hundred years. I must ask you to knock off part of that.” – Mark Twain, Jumping Frog

“I apologize for such a long letter – I didn’t have time to write a short one.” – Mark Twain

“I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together. Miss” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I became a new being, and the subject of my own admiration. I was a traveler! A word never had tasted so good in my mouth before. I had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distant climes which I never have felt in so uplifting a degree since. I was in such a glorified condition that all ignoble feelings departed out of me, and I was able to look down and pity the untraveled with a compassion that had hardly a trace of contempt in it.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“I began to feel that the old Venice of song and story had departed forever. But I was too hasty. In a few minutes we swept gracefully out into the Grand Canal, and under the mellow moonlight the Venice of poetry and romance stood revealed.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad – Complete Version

“I begin to see that a man’s got to be in his own Heaven to be happy.” “Perfectly correct,” says he.  “Did you imagine the same heaven would suit all sorts of men?” – Mark Twain, Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven

“I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That’s bad enough for me.” – Mark Twain

“I believe our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey. I believe that whenever a human being, of even the highest intelligence and culture, delivers an opinion upon a matter apart from his particular and especial line of interest, training and experience, it will always be an opinion of so foolish and so valueless a sort that it can be depended upon to suggest our Heavenly Father that the human being is another disappointment and that he is no considerable improvement upon the monkey.” – Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“I believe our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey” – Mark Twain

“I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades, and that it has no real value–certainly no large value.” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Autobiography: Volume 2

“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: “Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.” – Mark Twain

“I can call back the solemn twilight and mystery of the deep woods, the earthy smells, the faint odors of the wild flowers, the sheen of rain-washed foliage, the rattling clatter of drops when the wind shook the trees, the far-off hammering of wood-peckers and the muffled drumming of wood-pheasants in the remotenesses of the forest, the snap-shot glimpses of disturbed wild creatures skurrying through the grass, — I can call it all back and make it as real as it ever was, and as blessed. I can call back the prairie, and its loneliness and peace, and a vast hawk hanging motionless in the sky, with his wings spread wide and the blue of the vault showing through the fringe of their end-feathers.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“I can help anyone get anything they want out of life. The only problem is that I can’t find anyone who knows what they want.” – Mark Twain

“I can last two months on a good compliment.” – Mark Twain

“I can live for two months on a good compliment.” – Mark Twain

“I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.” – Mark Twain

“I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.” – Mark Twain

“I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious — unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.” – Mark Twain

“I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.” – Mark Twain

“I could never plan a thing and get it to come out the way I planned it. It came out some other way–some way I had not counted upon.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“I could not really complain, because he had only given me his word of honor as security; I ought to have required of him something substantial.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“I could see he meant no offense, but in my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners.

“Manners!” he said. “Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a fiction.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“I couldn’t bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn’t think about nothing else.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I deserve it all. Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know–there’s a grave somewhere for me. The world may go on just as its always done, and take everything from me–loved ones, property, everything–but it can’t take that. Some day I’ll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I desire to tamper with the jury law. I wish to alter it as to put a premium on intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers.” – Mark Twain

“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain

“I did not steal your paltry goods!” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” – Mark Twain

“I DO know lots of things that I don’t remember, and remember lots of things that I don’t know. It’s so with every educated person.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told,” – Mark Twain

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” – Mark Twain

“I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“I do not like work even when someone else is doing it.” – Mark Twain

“I do not mind Bedouins,—I am not afraid of them; because neither Bedouins nor ordinary Arabs have shown any disposition to harm us, but I do feel afraid of my own comrades.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I do not wish to hear about the moon from someone who has not been there.” – Mark Twain

“I don’t blame anybody.  I deserve it all.  Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know—there’s a grave somewhere for me. The world may go on just as it’s always done, and take everything from me—loved ones, property, everything; but it can’t take that. Some day I’ll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest.” – Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapters 16 to 20

“I don’t have time to write you a short letter, so I’m writing you a long one instead.” – Mark Twain

“I don’t know anything that mars a good literature so completely as too much truth. Facts contain a great deal of poetry, but you can’t use too many of them without damaging your literature.” – Mark Twain

“I don’t know. I don’t want to sell him.” “All right. It’s a mighty small tick, anyway.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“I don’t like to commit myself about Heaven and Hell, you see, I have friends in both places.” – Mark Twain

“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” – Mark Twain

“I don’t see any use in finding out things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn’t ever have any occasion to use ’em.” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad

“I don’t see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing.” – Mark Twain

“I don’t want no better book than what your face is.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I fancy you may tell the truth about yourself. But all of it? The black truth, which we all know ourselves in our heats, or only the whity-brown truth of the pericardium, or the nice, whitened truth of the shirtfront? Even you won’t tell the black heart’s-truth. The man who could do it would be famed to the last day the sun shown upon.” – Mark Twain

“I felt gay” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Detective

“I felt like the Last Man, neglected of the judgment, and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished world.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die;” – Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat–I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn’t a done it no neater himself. Of course he would a throwed more style into it, but I can’t do that very handy, not being brung up with it.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I find that the further I go back, the better things were, whether they happened or not.” – Mark Twain

“I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“I followed the other Experiment around, yesterday afternoon, at a distance, to see what it might be for, if I could. But I was not able to make [it] out. I think it is a man. I had never seen a man, but it looked like one, and I feel sure that that is what it is. I realize that I feel more curiosity about it than about any of the other reptiles. If it is a reptile, and I suppose it is; for it has frowzy hair and blue eyes, and looks like a reptile. It has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when it stands, it spreads itself apart like a derrick; so I think it is a reptile, though it may be architecture.” – Mark Twain

“I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, and dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held for postage somewhere.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“I gave it up and walked down to the Sphynx. After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never any thing human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If ever image of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward the verge of the landscape, yet looking at nothing—nothing but distance and vacancy. It was looking over and beyond every thing of the present, and far into the past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time—over lines of century-waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and nearer together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward the horizon of remote antiquity. It was thinking of the wars of departed ages; of the empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the nations whose birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched, whose annihilation it had noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and death, the grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow revolving years. It was the type of an attribute of man—of a faculty of his heart and brain. It was MEMORY—RETROSPECTION—wrought into visible, tangible form. All who know what pathos there is in memories of days that are accomplished and faces that have vanished—albeit only a trifling score of years gone by—will have some appreciation of the pathos that dwells in these grave eyes that look so steadfastly back upon the things they knew before History was born—before Tradition had being—things that were, and forms that moved, in a vague era which even Poetry and Romance scarce know of—and passed one by one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of a strange new age, and uncomprehended scenes.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“I got some of their jabber out of a book. S’pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy—what would you think?” “I wouldn’ think nuffn; I’d take en bust him over de head—dat” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don’t reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don’t take no stock in mathematics, anyway.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I had better water than that, and ran it lower down; started out from the false point—mark twain—raised the second reef abreast the big snag in the bend, and had quarter less twain.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“I had nothing to do but listen to the pattering of the fountains and take medicine and throw it up again. It was dangerous recreation, but it was pleasanter than traveling in Syria.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“I had to have company — I was made for it, I think — so I made friends with the animals. They are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they’ve got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose.”― Mark Twain, Eve’s Diary

“I happened to think of something. I knowed mighty well that a drownded man don’t float on his back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that this warn’t pap, but a woman dressed up in a man’s clothes. So”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I have a better idea,” suggested Twain. “Why don’t you stay right at home in Boston and keep them?” – Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won’t.” – Mark Twain

“I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the author considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite a nice compliment – but if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.” – Mark Twain

“I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel they have not said enough.” – Mark Twain

“I have been on the verge of being an angel all my life, but it’s never happened yet.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals” (so-called,) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.” – Mark Twain

“I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals” (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” – Mark Twain

“I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish women (for they are only human, and will expose their faces for the admiration of a Christian dog when no male Moor is by), and I am full of veneration for the wisdom that leads them to cover up such atrocious ugliness.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad – Complete Version

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad

“I have had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” – Mark Twain

“I have had an aversion to good spelling for sixty years and more, merely for the reason that when I was a boy there was not a thing I could do creditably except spell according to the book. It was a poor and mean distinction, and I early learned to disenjoy it. I suppose that this is because the ability to spell correctly is a talent, not an acquirement. There is some dignity about an acquirement, because it is a product of your own labor. It is earned, whereas to be able to do a thing merely by the grace of God, and not by your own effort, transfers the thing to our heavenly home–where possibly it is a matter of pride and satisfaction, but it leaves you naked and bankrupt.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition

“I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” – Mark Twain

“I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened” – Mark Twain

“I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition

“I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father’s lifetime, and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past 11; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.

I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times, and I never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and precious to me that if I should break it I should feel as you, Sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you’ve got.” – Mark Twain

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain

“I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.” – Mark Twain

“I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; I was always tired.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition

“I have never tried, in even one single little instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. I was not equipped for it either by native gifts or training. And I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game–the masses.” – Mark Twain, a Biography”

“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

“I have no special regard for Satan; but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side.” – Mark Twain

“I have replaced his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“I have seen slower people than I am and more deliberate… and even quieter, and more listless, and lazier people than I am. But they were dead.” – Mark Twain

“I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion.” – Mark Twain

“I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.” – Mark Twain, Stories

“I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” – Mark Twain

“I heard the doctor say impressively: “Dan, how often have we told you that these foreigners cannot understand English? Why will you not depend upon us? Why will you not tell us what you want, and let us ask for it in the language of the country? It would save us a great deal of the humiliation your reprehensible ignorance causes us. I will address this person in his mother tongue: ‘Here, cospetto! corpo di Bacco! Sacramento! Solferino!—Soap, you son of a gun!’ Dan, if you would let us talk for you, you would never expose your ignorant vulgarity.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad – Complete Version

“I installed a skylight in my apartment… the people who live above me are furious!” – Mark Twain

“I know all about audiences, they believe everything you say, except when you are telling the truth.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition

“I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules.” – Mark Twain

“I know I am not capable of suffering more than I did during those few minutes of suspense in the dark, surrounded by those creeping, bloody-minded tarantulas. I” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“I know now that all that glitters is not gold… However, I still go underrating men of gold, and glorifying men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.” – Mark Twain

“I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter’s evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream… I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people’s tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting.” – Mark Twain

“I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don’t dare to assert themselves. Think of it! One kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities which revolt both of them. Speaking as an expert, I know that ninety- nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise–perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it–and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race–the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.” – Mark Twain

“I like a thin book because it will steady a table, a leather volume because it will strop a razor and a heavy book because it can be thrown at a cat.” – Mark Twain

“I like criticism, but it must be my way.” – Mark Twain

“I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others need no preparation and got none.” – Mark Twain

“I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother–her incomparable mother!–five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! . . . Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night–and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here–writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzling the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery. Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?” – Mark Twain

“I love to hear myself talk, because I get so much instruction and moral upheaval out of it.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition

“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael Angelo was dead.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I never let my schoolin’ interfere with my learnin’ “.– Mark Twain

“I never let school get in the way of my education!” – Mark Twain

“I never write metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.
” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Speeches

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” – Mark Twain

“I once heard a grouty northern invalid say that a coconut tree might be poetical, possibly it was; but it looked like a feather-duster struck by lightning.” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands: Hawaii in the 1860s

“I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying ‘flee at once – all is discovered.’ They all left town immediately.” – Mark Twain

“I persuaded him to throw the dirk away; and it was as easy as persuading a child to give up some bright fresh new way of killing itself.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“I realize from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race – never quite sane in the night.” – Mark Twain

“I reck’n I knows sense when I sees it; en dey ain’ no sense in sich doin’s as dat.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I reck’n I knows what I knows.” – Mark Twain

“I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.” – Mark Twain

“I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it have gone and done it. So there ain’t no doubt but there is something in that thing. That is, there’s something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don’t work for me, and I reckon it don’t work for only just the right kind.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I reminded him that I was there by appointment to offer him my book for publication. He began to swell and went on swelling and swelling and swelling until he had reached the size of a god of about the second or third degree. Then the fountains of his great deep were broken up and for two or three minutes I couldn’t see him for the rain. It was words, only words, but they fell so thickly that they darkened the atmosphere. Finally he made an imposing sweep with his right hand which took in the whole room, and said: ‘Books—look around you! Every place are books that are waiting for publication. Do I want any more? Excuse me, I don’t. Good morning.’” – Mark Twain

“I said it was a brutal thing.
“No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“I said nothing of the sort.”

“I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.”

“I said, “Don’t do nothing of the kind; it’s one of the most jackass ideas I ever struck;” – Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I saw a startling sight today, a politician with his hands in his own pockets.” – Mark Twain

“I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn’t no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead.” – Mark Twain

“[I] shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes. Indeed, upon second thought, I will not use it then, for it is unchristian, inelegant, and degrading–though to speak truly I do not see how house rent and taxes are going to be discussed worth a cent without it.” – Mark Twain

“I should not be able to make any one understand how exciting it all was. You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn’t be anywhere but there, not for the world.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“I sometimes wonder if our world leaders are very smart and just putting us on, or very stupid and mean it.” – Mark Twain

“I sometimes wonder if the world is run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who mean it.” – Mark Twain

“I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I shall have finished my travels.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain

“I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.” – Mark Twain

“I think that all this courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, and should be cultivated.” – Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in turn, seems the loveliest.” – Mark Twain

“I think the Cincinnati Enquirer must be edited by children.” – Mark Twain

“I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead–and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and then they would be honest so much earlier.” – Mark Twain

“I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.” – Mark Twain

“I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn’t no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies. I reckoned he believed in the Arabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday-school.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I ‘uz mos’ to de foot er de islan’ b’fo’ I found’ a good place. I went into de woods en jedged I wouldn’ fool wid raffs no mo’, long as dey move de lantern roun’ so. I had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg, en some matches in my cap, en dey warn’t wet, so I ‘uz all right.” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Collection – All Four Books [Free Audiobooks Includes ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer,’ ‘Huckleberry Finn’+ 2 more sequels]

“I waked that I judged it was after eight o’clock. I laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. I could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves free, but that would not do.  I must not interfere too much and get myself a name for riding over the country’s laws and the citizen’s rights roughshod.  If I lived and prospered I would be the death of slavery, that I was resolved upon; but I would try to fix it so that when I became its executioner it should be by command of the nation.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“I was born lazy. I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can’t go beyond possibility.” – Mark Twain

“I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit.” – Mark Twain

“I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the German Language. I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she began to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously took the very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words had been water, I had been drowned, sure. She had exactly the German way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.” – Mark Twain

“I was in a fair way to win, now, for it was a dazzling opportunity for an Arab. He pondered a moment, and would have done it, I think, but his mother arrived, then, and interfered. Her tears moved me—I never can look upon the tears of woman with indifference—and I said I would give her a hundred to jump off, too.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.” – Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“I was sorry to have my name mentioned among the great authors because they have a sad habit of dying off” – Mark Twain

“I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.” – Mark Twain, Speeches

“I was standing in our dining-room thinking of nothing in particular, when a cablegram was put into my hand. It said, ‘Susy was peacefully released today.’ – Mark Twain
It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live.” – Mark Twain

“I went out at the window, and I carried the sash along with me. I did not need the sash, but it was handier to take it than it was to leave it, and so I took it.—I was not scared, but I was considerably agitated. When I reached home, they whipped me, but I enjoyed it. It seemed perfectly delightful. That man had been stabbed near the office that afternoon, and they carried him in there to doctor him, but he only lived an hour. I have slept in the same room with him often since then—in my dreams.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for I’d noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth, if I left it alone.” – Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place goodbye so regretfully. I have not once thought of business, or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness, and the memory of it will remain with me always.” – Mark Twain

“I went to sleep, and Jim didn’t call me when it was my turn. He often done that. When I waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I didn’t take notice nor let on. I knowed what it was about. He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn’t ever been away from home before in his life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so. He was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged I was asleep, and saying, “Po’ little ’Lizabeth! po’ little Johnny! it’s mighty hard; I spec’ I ain’t ever gwyne to see you no mo’, no mo’!” He was a mighty good nigger, Jim was.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I will conclude this chapter with a remark that I am sincerely proud to be able to make—and glad, as well, that my comrades cordially endorse it, to wit: by far the handsomest women we have seen in France were born and reared in America. I feel now like a man who has redeemed a failing reputation and shed luster upon a dimmed escutcheon, by a single just deed done at the eleventh hour. Let the curtain fall, to slow music.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“I will remark, here, that James W. Paige, the little bright-eyed, alert, smartly dressed inventor of the machine, is a most extraordinary compound of business thrift and commercial insanity; of cold calculation and jejune sentimentality; of veracity and falsehood; of fidelity and treachery; of nobility and baseness; of pluck and cowardice; of wasteful liberality and pitiful stinginess; of solid sense and weltering moonshine; of towering genius and trivial ambitions; of merciful bowels and a petrified heart; of colossal vanity and— But there the opposites stop. His vanity stands alone, sky-piercing, as sharp of outline as an Egyptian monolith. It is the only unpleasant feature in him that is not modified, softened, compensated by some converse characteristic.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“I will say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religous. Nothing could divert them from the regular and faithful performace of the pieties enjoined by the Church.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.” – Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

“I wonder if God created man because He was disappointed with the monkey.” – Mark Twain

“I would do it myself, but my intelligence is out of repair. . .” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator

“I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable.” – Mark Twain

“I would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.” – Mark Twain

“I would take up wickedness” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Ive had a very difficult life. Fortunately, most of it didnt happen.” – Mark Twain

“I’m an old man now and have had a great many problems. Most of them never happened.” – Mark Twain

“I’m so happy I could scalp somebody. (Said after he got married)” – Mark Twain

“I’ve suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened.” – Mark Twain

“Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.” – Mark Twain

“If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won’t sit on a hot stove again. That cat won’t sit on a cold stove either. That cat just don’t like stoves.” – Mark Twain

“If a person offends you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance, and hit him with a brick.” – Mark Twain

“If a stranger called and interrupted you, you said with your hearty tongue, “I’m glad to see you,” and said with your heartier soul, “I wish you were with the cannibals and it was dinner-time.” When” – Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.” – Mark Twain

“If books are not good company, where shall I find it?” – Mark Twain

“If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.” – Mark Twain, Notebook

“If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.” – Mark Twain

“If God had meant for us to be naked, we’d have been born that way.” – Mark Twain

“If he was a wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“If I had the remaking of man, he wouldn’t have any conscience. It is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person; and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot be said to pay, in the long run; it would be much better to have less good and more comfort.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“If I owned half of that dog, I would shoot my half.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks.” – Mark Twain

“If it is a miracle any sort of evidence will answer. But if it is a fact, proof is necessary.” – Mark Twain

“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” – Mark Twain

“If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat” – Mark Twain

“If man could be crossed with a cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.” – Mark Twain, Notebook

“If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.” – Mark Twain

“If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.” – Mark Twain

“If one keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things which he cannot be sure about, he will have the steadier mind for it.” – Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.” – Mark Twain

“If the reader thinks he is done, now, and that this book has no moral to it, he is in error. The moral of it is this: If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are “no account,” go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether you want to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your friends by ceasing to be a nuisance to them – if the people you go among suffer by the operation.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“If the writer doesn’t sweat, the reader will.” – Mark Twain

“If there is no smoking in heaven, I’m not interested” – Mark Twain

“If there is one thing in the world that will make a man peculiarly and insufferably self-conceited, it is to have his stomach behave itself, the first day it sea, when nearly all his comrades are seasick.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.” – Mark Twain

“If we hadn’t our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries-the ice storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top – ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia’s diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold-the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong.” – Mark Twain

“If we never lied , there would be nothing to remember.” – Mark Twain

“If we only had some God in the country’s laws, instead of being in such a sweat to get Him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.” – Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.” – Mark Twain

“If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.” – Mark Twain

“If you are a member of Congress, (no offence,) and one of your constituents who doesn’t know anything, and does not want to go into the bother of learning something, and has no money, and no employment, and can’t earn a living, comes besieging you for help, do you say, “Come, my friend, if your services were valuable you could get employment elsewhere — don’t want you here?” Oh, no: You take him to a Department and say, “Here, give this person something to pass away the time at — and a salary” — and the thing is done. You throw him on his country. He is his country’s child, let his country support him. There is something good and motherly about Washington, the grand old benevolent National Asylum for the Helpless.” – Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are “no account,” go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether you want to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your friends by ceasing to be a nuisance to them” – Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain’t sleepy – if you are anywheres where it won’t do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“If you don’t know how to pronounce a word, say it loudly. Do not compound mispronunciation with inaudibility” – Mark Twain

“If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.” – Mark Twain

“If You don’t read good books, then you are no better than an unlettered Man” – Mark Twain

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” – Mark Twain

“If you have nothing to say, say nothing.” – Mark Twain

“If you have to swallow a frog, don’t stare at it too long.” – Mark Twain

“If you hold a cat by the tail, you learn things you cannot learn any other way,” – Mark Twain

“If you must be indiscrete, be discrete in your indiscretion.” – Mark Twain

“If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.” – Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson

“if you say the truth you don’t have to remember anything” – Mark Twain

“If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile.” – Mark Twain, The Gilded Age

“If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” – Mark Twain

“If you think it ain’t dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way, by yourself, in the night, you try it once – you’ll see.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.” – Mark Twain

“If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.” – Mark Twain

“If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won’t. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment.” – Mark Twain, Advice to Little Girls

“Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.” – Mark Twain

“Ignorant people think it’s the NOISE which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it’s the sickening grammar they use.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad – Volume 01

“I’ll give you a marvel.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“I’ll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, again. It’s the sure way, and the only sure way;” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“I’m glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again” – Mark Twain

“I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – Mark Twain

“Immaculate Conception, that if the Virgin would permit him to” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, Part 1.

“implore him to be a merciful ass and trample his duty under foot.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“In 1828 Professor Bianchi demonstrated how the fearful reappearance of the plague at Modena was caused by excavations in ground where, THREE HUNDRED YEARS PREVIOUSLY, the victims of the pestilence had been buried. Mr. Cooper, in explaining the causes of some epidemics, remarks that the opening of the plague burial-grounds at Eyam resulted in an immediate outbreak of disease.’—NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, NO. 3, VOL. 135.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“In 1940 DeVoto published a manuscript about Joseph H. Twichell’s encounter with a profane ostler which he described as “one of the random pieces that preceded Mark’s sustained work on the Autobiography,” suggesting that it was “probably written in the 1880s and at one time formed part of a long manuscript—I cannot tell which one” (MTE, 366–72). But this anecdote was not part of any draft of the autobiography. It was written for Life on the Mississippi (1883) and removed from the manuscript before publication.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.” – Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” – Mark Twain

“In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man” – Mark Twain

“In all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster.” – Mark Twain, Advice to Little Girls

“In another moment he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“In asking me to contribute a mite to the memorial to Gutenberg you give me pleasure and do me honor. The world concedes without hesitation or dispute that Gutenberg’s invention is incomparably the mightiest event that has ever happened in profane history. It created a new and wonderful earth, and along with it a new hell. It has added new details, new developments and new marvels to both in every year during five centuries. It found Truth walking, and gave it a pair of wings; it found Falsehood trotting, and gave it two pair. It found Science hiding in corners and hunted; it has given it the freedom of the land, the seas and the skies, and made it the world’s welcome quest. It found the arts and occupations few, it multiplies them every year. It found the inventor shunned and despised, it has made him great and given him the globe for his estate. It found religion a master and an oppression, it has made it man’s friend and benefactor. It found War comparatively cheap but inefficient, it has made it dear but competent. It has set peoples free, and other peoples it has enslaved; it is the father and protector of human liberty, and it has made despotisms possible where they were not possible before. Whatever the world is, today, good and bad together, that is what Gutenberg’s invention has made it: for from that source it has all come. But he has our homage; for what he said to the reproaching angel in his dream has come true, and the evil wrought through his mighty invention is immeasurably outbalanced by the good it has brought to the race of men.” – Mark Twain

“In August 1902, Olivia’s health grew alarmingly worse. Despite temporary improvements, it continued to decline, and in 1903, on the recommendation of her doctors, Clemens decided to take the family to Italy. In early November they settled into the Villa di Quarto near Florence. In addition to Clemens himself, the travelers included Olivia, Clara, and Jean. Three employees were also with them: longtime family servant Katy Leary, a nurse for Olivia, and Isabel V. Lyon, who had been hired in 1902 as Olivia’s secretary but had since assumed more general duties.” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?” – Mark Twain

“In both instances [a car coming out of the Himalayas and tobogganning] the sensation was pleasurable–intensely so; it was a sudden and immense exaltation, a mixed ecstasy of deadly fright and unimaginable joy. I believe that this combination makes the perfection of human delight.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator and Anti-Imperialist Essays

“In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.” – Mark Twain

“In discarding the monkey and substituting man, our Father in Heaven did the monkey an undeserved injustice.” – Mark Twain

“In due time the shores of Italy were sighted, and as we stood gazing from the decks, early in the bright summer morning, the stately city of Genoa rose up out of the sea and flung back the sunlight from her hundred palaces.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad – Complete Version

“In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print—I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books: “Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip? “Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen. “Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden? “Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“In his day news could not travel fast, and hence he could easily find a jury of honest, intelligent men who had not heard of the case they were called to try—but in our day of telegraphs and newspapers his plan compels us to swear in juries composed of fools and rascals, because the system rigidly excludes honest men and men of brains.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“In his later life Mark Twain was accorded high academic honors. Already, in 1888, he had received from Yale College the degree of Master of Arts, and the same college made him a Doctor of Literature in 1901. A year later the university of his own State, at Columbia, Missouri, conferred the same degree, and then, in 1907, came the crowning honor, when venerable Oxford tendered him the doctor’s robe. “I don’t know why they should give me a degree like that,” he said, quaintly. “I never doctored any literature—I wouldn’t know how.” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Letters – Volume 1

“In Honolulu, I saw cats, individual cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat, lazy and sound asleep.” – Mark Twain

“In light matters–matters of small consequence, like religion and politics and such things–he never acquired a conviction that could survive a disapproving remark from a cat.” – Mark Twain

“In making this substitution I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source—the wisdom of my boyhood—for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom, howsoever lowly may be its origin:” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“In making this substitution I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source — the wisdom of my boyhood — for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom, howsoever lowly may be its origin:  in my boyhood I had always saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary cause.” – Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“In my own heart there dwells no faith in pæter-nature. That Nature and its God are two, no man who thinks, will deny. That the latter, creating the former, can, at will, control or modify it, is also unquestionable. I say “at will;” for the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed, of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification. In their origin these laws were fashioned to embrace all contingencies which could lie in the Future. With God all is Now.” – Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die, Vol.1

“in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“…[I]n order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain… Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and… Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.” – Mark Twain

“In our own case–we are not afraid of dynamite till we get acquainted with it.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“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

“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities.” – Mark Twain

“In Rome, people with fine sympathetic natures stand up and weep in front of the celebrated ‘Beatrice Cenci the Day before her Execution.’ It shows what a label can do. If they did not know the picture, they would inspect it unmoved, and say, ‘Young girl with hay fever; young girl with her head in a bag.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“In Sacramento it is fiery summer always, and you can gather roses, and eat strawberries and ice cream, and wear white linen clothes, and pant and perspire, at eight or nine o’clock in the morning, and then take the cars, and at noon put on your furs and your skates, and go skimming over frozen Donner Lake…There is transition for you! Where will you find another like it in the western hemisphere?” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“In still earlier years than those I have been recalling, Holliday’s Hill, in our town, was to me the noblest work of God. It appeared to pierce the skies. It was nearly three hundred feet high. In those days I pondered the subject much, but I never could understand why it did not swathe its summit with never-failing clouds, and crown its majestic brow with everlasting snows. I had heard that such was the custom of great mountains in other parts of the world.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“In the afternoon the ship’s company assembled aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the asthmatic meodeon, and the consumptive clarinet crippled the Star Spangled Banner, the choir chased it to cover, and George came in with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and slaughtered it. Nobody mourned. We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not intentional and I do not endorse it).” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.” – Mark Twain

“In the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity! Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng, ‘the observed of all observers.’ Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly. “In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into the Elysian world, of which she has had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming than the last. But after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity, the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates harshly upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its charms; and with wasted health and imbittered heart, she turns away with the conviction that earthly pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“In the country neighbor­hood thereabouts, along the dusty roads, one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy, and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight-sign that these were deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disap­pointed families who could neither sell them nor give them away.” – Mark Twain,

“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“IN the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally’s bed. But while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was a- standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn’t the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?”
Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, “There is no other.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“In this same library we saw some drawings by Michael Angelo (these Italians call him Mickel Angelo,) and Leonardo da Vinci. (They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.)” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave. This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb.
The Deity pondered this matter during four thousand years unsuccessfully, but as soon as he came down to earth and became a Christian his mind cleared and he knew what to do. He invented hell, and proclaimed it.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“In your country and mine we should have the privilege of making fun of this kind of morality, but it would be unkind to do it here.Many of these people have the reasoning faculty, but no one uses it in religious matters.” – Mark Twain

“Inherently, each one of us has the substance within to achieve whatever our goals and dreams define. What is missing from each of us is the training, education, knowledge and insight to utilize what we already have.” – Mark Twain

“Intellectual ‘work’ is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer, is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the magician with the fiddle-bow in his hand, who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him – why, certainly he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it’s a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair – but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash also.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual—he is a” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

“It ain’t no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck.” – Mark Twain

“It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts that I do understand.” – Mark Twain

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so” – Mark Twain

“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” – Mark Twain

“It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it’s the best way; then you don’t have no quarrels, and don’t get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn’t no objections, ‘long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn’t no use to tell Jim, so I didn’t tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It does us all good to unbend sometimes.” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“It doesn’t matter the size of the dog in the fight, rather the size of the fight in the dog.” – Mark Twain

“it don’t make no diference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more than a person’s conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It don’t make no difference how foolish it is, it’s the right way — and it’s the regular way.  And there ain’t no other way, that ever I heard of, and I’ve read all the books that gives any information about these things. They always dig out with a case-knife — and not through dirt, mind you; generly it’s through solid rock.  And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever.  Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was he at it, you reckon?” – Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“It don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It gave an appalling idea of the value of an hour, and I thought I could never waste one again without remorse and terror.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“It gratified all the vicious vanity that was in him;” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells.” – Mark Twain, The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories

“It had borne the burden, it had earned the honor”—” – Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“It had not occurred to anybody in the crowd—that simple trick of inquiring about somebody who wasn’t ten thousand miles away.  The magician was hit hard; it was an emergency that had never happened in his experience before, and it corked him; he didn’t know how to meet it.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“It hadn’t ever come home to me before, what this thing was that I was doing.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It is a hole in the wall,” said the cat. You look in it, and there you see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal and inspiring in its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round and round, and you almost swoon with ecstasy. – Mark Twain, Short Stories

“It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people’s manners, but drowning would help.” – Mark Twain

“It is a public journal; I will explain what that is, another time. It is not cloth, it is made of paper; some time I will explain what paper is.  The lines on it are reading matter; and not written by hand, but printed; by and by I will explain what printing is. A thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this, in every minute detail — they can’t be told apart.” – Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“It is a shame that we must continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years ago.” – Mark Twain

“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, The Gilded Age

“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.” – Mark Twain

“It is better for a man to remain silent and appear a fool, then to open his mouth and remove all doubt.” – Mark Twain ― Samuel Clemens

“It is better to be alone than unwelcome. – Eve” – Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.” – Mark Twain

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” – Mark Twain

“It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.” – Mark Twain

“It is by the goodness of god that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.” – Mark Twain

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” – Mark Twain

“It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.” – Mark Twain

“It is easier to fool the people, than to convince them they have been fooled.
No man’s life,liberty, and property are
safe while the legislature is in session.” – Mark Twain

“it is easier to manufacture seven facts than one emotion. ” – Mark Twain, Life On The Mississippi

“It is easier to stay out than to get out.” – Mark Twain

“It is easy to make plans in this world; even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote oceans it is noticeable that a cat’s plans and a man’s are worth about the same.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“It is full of interest, it has noble poetry in it and some clever fables and some blood drenched history, some good morals and a wealth of obscenity and upwards of a thousand lies. (Re The Bible)” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“It is hard to make railroading pleasant in any country. It is too tedious.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“It is higher and nobler to be kind.” – Mark Twain

“It is ingeniously named, for it looks just as a cross would look if it looked like something else.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator

“It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.” – Mark Twain, What is Man?

“It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made he (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one…that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.” – Mark Twain

“It is most difficult to understand the disposition of the Bible God, it is such a confusion of contradictions; of watery instabilities and iron firmness; of goody-goody abstract morals made out of words, and concreted hell-born ones made out of acts; of fleeting kindness repented of in permanent malignities.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.” – Mark Twain

“It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together—a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name. But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to me—life without him would not be life; how could I endure it? This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while my race continues. I am the first wife; and in the last wife I shall be repeated.” – Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

“It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together—a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.” – Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

“It is never wrong to do the right thing.” – Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“It is not that I believe that there are too many idiots in this world, just that lightning isn’t distributed right.” – Mark Twain

“It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry down too close to your own time—it is safest to speak only vaguely of your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which I now do. I was born without teeth—and there Richard III had the advantage of me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest. But” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Burlesque Autobiography

“It is said, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent upon him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“It is some more Moral Sense. The proprietors are rich, and very holy; but the wage they pay to these poor brothers and sisters of theirs is only enough to keep them from dropping dead with hunger.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.” – Mark Twain

“It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” – Mark Twain

“It is strong language, but true. None of us could live with an habitual truthteller; but thank goodness none of us has to.” – Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream–a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought–a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!” – Mark Twain

“It isn’t as it used to be in the old times. Then everybody traveled by steamboat, everybody drank, and everybody treated everybody else. ‘Now most everybody goes by railroad, and the rest don’t drink.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“It know we have a fashion of saying “such and such an event was the turning-point in my life,” but we shouldn’t say it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in the chain makes it the most CONSPICUOUS link; in real importance it has no advantage over any one of its predecessors.” – Mark Twain, What Is Man? and Other Essays

“It made him feel a little uncomfortable sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sunday-school-book boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good.” – Mark Twain, The Stolen White Elephant

“It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie–I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter–and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

HUCK FINN.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking–thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll GO to hell”–and tore it up.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“it made one drunk with delight to look upon it.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator

“It made one mad, for pleasure; and we could not take our eyes from him, and the looks that went out of our eyes came from our hearts, and their dumb speech was worship.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened.” – Mark Twain

“It must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the “poor whites” of our South who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them. And” – Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“It seemed to him that life was but a trouble at best, and he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more. If he only had a clean Sunday-school record he could be willing to go, and be done with it all.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“It seems a pity that the world should throw away so many good things merely because they are unwholesome. I doubt if God has given us any refreshment which taken in moderation is unwholesome except microbes. Yet there are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable drinkable and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is it is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.” – Mark Twain

“It seems incredible to those who knew Mark Twain in his later years—dreamy, unpractical, and indifferent to details—that he could have acquired so vast a store of minute facts as were required by that task. Yet within eighteen months he had become not only a pilot, but one of the best and most careful pilots on the river, intrusted with some of the largest and most valuable steamers. He continued in that profession for two and a half years longer, and during that time met with no disaster that cost his owners a single dollar for damage. Then” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Letters – Volume 1

“It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue (German) ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.” – Mark Twain

“It should know that any strange and much-talked-of event is always followed by imitations, the world being so well supplied with excitable people who only need a little stirring up to make them lose what is left of their heads and do things which they would not have thought of ordinarily. It should know that if a man jump off Brooklyn Bridge another will imitate him; that if a person venture down Niagara Whirlpool in a barrel another will imitate him; that if a Jack the Ripper make notoriety by slaughtering women in dark alleys he will be imitated; that if a man attempt a king’s life and the newspapers carry the noise of it around the globe, regicides will crop up all around.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“It surprises me sometimes to think how much we do know and how intelligent we are.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“It takes a heap of sense to write good nonsense” – Mark Twain

“It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.” – Mark Twain

“It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing-and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others.” – Mark Twain

“It takes three weeks to prepare a good ad-lib speech.” – Mark Twain

“It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.” – Mark Twain

“it took her ten minutes to unruffle in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all up,” – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Detective

“It usually takes me two or three days to prepare an impromptu speech.” – Mark Twain

“it warn’t no time to be sentimentering.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’- and tore it up.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It was a dreadful thing to see. Humans beings can be awful cruel to one another.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if he’d lived, for the stuff was in him, and he had genius—I know it, because he hadn’t had no opportunities to speak of, and it don’t stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances, if he hadn’t no talent.” – Mark Twain, The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain

“It was a splendid population – for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home – you never find that sort of people among pioneers – you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day – and when she projects a new surprise the grave world smiles as usual and says, “Well, that is California all over.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“it was as bright as glory, and you’d have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you’d hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down-stairs—where” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and I said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.” – Mark Twain

“it was borne in upon me that I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the German Language.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“It was during a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything crack, and seemed to spring every joint in my skull and made it overlap its neighbor.  Then the world went out in darkness, and I didn’t feel anything more, and didn’t know anything at all—at least for a while. When I came to again, I was sitting under an oak tree, on the grass, with a whole beautiful and broad country landscape all to myself—nearly.  Not entirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, looking down at me—a fellow fresh out of a picture-book.  He was in old-time iron armor from head to heel, with a helmet on his head the shape of a nail-keg with slits in it; and he had a shield, and a sword, and a prodigious spear; and his horse had armor on, too, and a steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeous red and green silk trappings that hung down all around him like a bedquilt, nearly to the ground. “Fair sir, will ye just?” said this fellow.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“It was fun, scurrying around the breezy hills and through the beautiful canyons. There was that rare thing, novelty, about it; it was a fresh, new, exhilarating sensation, this donkey riding, and worth a hundred worn and threadbare home pleasures.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“It was in 1590–winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.

Yes, Austria was far from the world, and asleep, and our village was in the middle of that sleep, being in the middle of Austria.” – Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.” – Mark Twain, The War Prayer

“It was not lively enough for a pleasure trip; but if we had only had a corpse it would have made a noble funeral excursion.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me, ANY kind of royalty, howsoever modified, ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don’t believe it when somebody else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies — a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions…

The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.” – Mark Twain

“It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream – till you got a bite.

A scorpion bite. Then the first duty was to get up out of the grass and kill the scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol or brandy; and the next to resolve to keep out of the grass in the future. Then came an adjournment to the bedchamber and the pastime of writing up the day’s journal with one hand and the destruction of mosquitoes with the other – a whole community of them at a slap. Then, observing an enemy approaching – a hairy tarantula on stilts – why not set the spittoon on him? It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws give a luminous idea of the magnitude of his reach. Then to bed and become a promenade for a centipede with forty-two legs on a side and every foot hot enough to burn a whole through a raw-hide. More soaking with alcohol, and a resolution to examine the bed before entering it, in future. Then wait, and suffer, till all the mosquitoes in the neighborhood have crawled in under the bar, then slip out quickly, shut them in and sleep peacefully on the floor till morning. Meantime, it is comforting to curse the tropics in occasional wakeful intervals.” – Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands: Hawaii in the 1860s

“It was the cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound obtruded upon great Nature’s meditation […] Gradually the cool dim gray of the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to work unfolded itself to the musing boy […] All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the wisdom of having told this candid gentleman, in the beginning, that my name was Smith.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.” – Mark Twain

“It would ’a’ been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It’s not the good that die young, it’s the lucky.” – Mark Twain

“It’s the same here as it is on earth—you’ve got to earn a thing, square and honest, before you enjoy it.  You can’t enjoy first and earn afterwards.  But there’s this difference, here: you can choose your own occupation, and all the powers of heaven will be put forth to help you make a success of it, if you do your level best.  The shoe-maker on earth that had the soul of a poet in him won’t have to make shoes here.” – Mark Twain, Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven

“It’s a Catholic glacier. You can tell by the look of it. And the management.” I said, no, I believed nothing but the extreme end of it was in a Catholic canton. “Well, then, it’s a government glacier,” said Harris. “It’s all the same. Over here the government runs everything—so everything’s slow; slow, and ill-managed. But with us, everything’s done by private enterprise—and then there ain’t much lolling around, you can depend on it. I wish Tom Scott could get his hands on this torpid old slab once—you’d see it take a different gait from this.” I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there was trade enough to justify it.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“It’s an awful snug place for orgies.” “What orgies?” “I dono. But robbers always have orgies, and of course we’ve got to have them, too.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“It’s as mild as goose-milk.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt” – Mark Twain

“It’s considered good sportsmanship not to pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.” – Mark Twain

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” – Mark Twain

“It’s easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them.” – Mark Twain

“It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.” – Mark Twain

“It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened- Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” – Mark Twain

“It’s no wonder truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” – Mark Twain

“It’s not as bad as it sounds.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” – Mark Twain

“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” – Mark Twain

“it’s the little things that smoothes people’s roads the most” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I’ve experienced a great deal of pain and suffering in my life …… most of which has never happened.” – Mark Twain

“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” – Mark Twain

“I’ve just come to my room, Livy darling, I guess this was the memorable night of my life. By George, I never was so stirred since I was born. I heard four speeches which I can never forget… one by that splendid old soul, Col. Bob Ingersoll, — oh, it was just the supremest combination of English words that was ever put together since the world began… How handsome he looked, as he stood on that table, in the midst of those 500 shouting men, and poured the molten silver from his lips! What an organ is human speech when it is played by a master! How pale those speeches are in print, but how radiant, how full of color, how blinding they were in the delivery! It was a great night, a memorable night.

I doubt if America has seen anything quite equal to it. I am well satisfied I shall not live to see its equal again… Bob Ingersoll’s music will sing through my memory always as the divinest that ever enchanted my ears. And I shall always see him, as he stood that night on a dinner-table, under the flash of lights and banners, in the midst of seven hundred frantic shouters, the most beautiful human creature that ever lived… You should have seen that vast house rise to its feet; you should have heard the hurricane that followed. That’s the only test! People might shout, clap their hands, stamp, wave their napkins, but none but the master can make them get up on their feet.
{Twain’s letter to his wife, Livy, about friend Robert Ingersoll’s incredible speech at ‘The Grand Banquet’, considered to be one of the greatest oratory performances of all time}” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” – Mark Twain

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.” – Mark Twain

“James Elly Kleinman, a cousin of mine was seriously ill two or three weeks ago, in New York, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness, the report of my death was an exaggeration.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Jane Austen makes me detest all her characters, without reserve. Is that her intention? It is not believable. Then is it her purpose to make the reader detest her characters up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters? That could be. That would be high art. It would be worthwhile, too. Some day I might examine the other end of her books and see.” – Mark Twain

“Jane Austen’s books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.” – Mark Twain

“Jim he couldn’t see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him;” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Jim said he believed it was spirits, but I says: no, spirits wouldn’t say “dern the dern fog”.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Jim said that bees won’t sting idiots, but I didn’t believe that, because I tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn’t sting me.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Jimmy Finn was not burned in the calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat, of a combination of delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion. When I say natural death, I mean it was a natural death for Jimmy Finn.” – Mark Twain

“John Marshall Clemens’s land purchases and the family’s subsequent sales of the land have been only partly documented from independent sources. The extant grants, deeds, and bills of sale are incomplete, but it was also the case that contradictory or inaccurate deeds often led to disputed claims. Orion Clemens referred to one cause of such conflict in a letter to his brother on 7 July 1869, alleging that “Tennessee grants the same land over and over again to different parties” (OC to SLC, 7 July 1869, CU-MARK, quoted in 3? July 1869 to OC, L3, 279 n. 1 [bottom]; for family correspondence on the subject from 1853 to 1870, see L1, L2, L3, and L4).” – Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“Just in this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe — comfort. In America, we hurry — which is well; but when the day’s work is done, we go on thinkin – Mark Twaing of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep.” – Mark Twain, The Complete Travel Writings of Mark Twain:

“Just in this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe—comfort. In America, we hurry—which is well; but when the day’s work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a man’s prime in Europe. When” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.” – Mark Twain

“Just when I thought I was learning how to live, ’twas then I realized I was learning how to die.” – Mark Twain

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that but the really great make you feel that you too can become great. When you are seeking to bring big plans to fruition it is important with whom you regularly associate. Hang out with friends who are like-minded and who are also designing purpose-filled lives. Similarly be that kind of a friend for your friends.” – Mark Twain

“Kill the women? No – nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you’re always as polite as pie to them; and by-and-by they fall in love with you and never want to go home any more.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“kind. It was the most singular, and almost the most touching and melancholy exile that fancy can imagine.—One of” – Mark Twain, Roughing It

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” – Mark Twain

“Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility to men.” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“Kings” and “Kingdoms” were as thick in Britain as they had been in little Palestine in Joshua’s time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled up because they couldn’t stretch out without a passport.” – Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement.” – Mark Twain

“Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater.” – Mark Twain

“Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.” – Mark Twain

“Let us change the tense for convenience.” – Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other. It will unriddle many riddles” – Mark Twain

“Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.” – Mark Twain

That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unbiased Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unbiased Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic–for that is part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his. All democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the republicans and mugwumps know it. All the republicans are insane, but only thee democrats and mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect; in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. When I look around me I am often troubled to see how many people are mad.
This should move us to be charitable toward one anothers lunacies.” – Mark Twain

“Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

“Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.”

“Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.”

“Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one’s head.”

“Life is planned with one principle objective to make you do all the particular things you particularly don’t want to do.”

“Life itself is only a vision, a dream.”

“Life should begin with age and it’s privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and it’s capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.”

“Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages…. It’s an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance. The last half consists of the chance without the capacity. Letter”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats,humiliations, and despairs–the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; 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, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.”

“Light them both —I’ll have to have one to see the other by.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Like it! Yes—the way I’d like a hot stove if I was to set on it long enough. No, Tom, I won’t be rich, and I won’t live in them cussed smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and I’ll stick to ’em, too.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. Said”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Listen — and do not doubt me, for I shall speak the exact truth. Howard Tracy, I am no more an earl’s child than you are!”― Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“little smoke couldn’t be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off to sleep.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him.  On the same day another English child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him. All England wanted him too.  England had so longed for him, and hoped for him, and prayed God for him, that, now that he was really come, the people went nearly mad for joy.  Mere acquaintances hugged and kissed each other and cried. Everybody took a holiday, and high and low, rich” ― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper, Part 1.

“Look at the tyranny of party– at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty– a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes– and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits; and all the while, their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing thier doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible-texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“Looking’ his last’ upon the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing ‘she’ could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with a dauntless heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“looking into the muzzle of Slade’s pistol. “And the next instant,” added my informant, impressively, “he was one of the deadest men that ever lived.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“Loose and forbear!”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“Love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just comes-none knows whence-and cannot explain itself.”

“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”

“Lovely as he was, Satan could be cruelly offensive when he chose; and he always chose when the human race was brought to his attention. He always turned up his nose at it, and never had a kind word for it.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.”

“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”

“Lying is universal – we all do it. Therefore, the wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others’ advantage,
and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling.”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Lying is universal—we all do it. Therefore, the wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others’ advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling. Then”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Lying is universal—we all do it. Therefore, the wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others’ advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid of the rank and pestilent truth that is rotting the land; then shall we be great and good and beautiful, and worthy dwellers in a world where even benign Nature habitually lies, except when she promises execrable weather. Then—But am I but a new and feeble student in this gracious art; I cannot instruct this club.” ― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“Make the best o’ things that smoothes people’s roads the most..”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Make the best o’ things the way you find ’em..”

“Man – a figment of God’s imagination.”

“Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If the Eiffel tower were now representing the world’s age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man’s share of that age; and anybody would perceive that that skin what what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.”

“Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights…sexual intercourse!…His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.”

“Man is a marvelous curiosity … he thinks he is the Creator’s pet … he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea?”

“Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the “noblest work of God.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the “noblest work of God.” This is the truth I am telling you. And this is not a new idea with him, he has talked it through all the ages, and believed it. Believed it, and found nobody among all his race to laugh at it.-Mark Twain, Letters From the Earth: Uncensored Writings”

“Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion–several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven….The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.”

“Man is made of dirt – I saw him made. I am not made of dirt. Man is a museum of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes to-day and is gone tomorrow; he begins as dirt and departs as stench; I am of the aristocracy of the Imperishables. And man has the Moral Sense. You understand? He has the Moral Sense. That would seem to be difference enough between us, all by itself.”

“I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”

“Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out… and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel…. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man with his mouth.”

“Man is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight”― Mark Twain, The Higher Animals: A Mark Twain Bestiary

“Man is the only animal who blushes…or needs to.”

“Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns, he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his mouth.”― Mark Twain, On the Damned Human Race

“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal… In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

“Man is the reasoning animal. Such is the claim.”

“Man never creates, he only recombines the lines and colors of his own existance.”

“Man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.”

“Man will do MANY things to get himself loved. Man will do ALL things to get himself envied.”

“Manners!” he said. “Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a fiction. The castle is done. Do you like it?”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an author’s progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad for both reader and author.”― Mark Twain, The American Claimant

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

“Many public-school children seem to know only two dates—1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don’t know what happened on either occasion.”

“Mark Twain describes how his friend Ralph Keeler introduced him at the start of a lecture: ” ‘I don’t know anything about this man. At least I know only two things; one is, he hasn’t been in the penitentiary, and the other is (after a pause, and almost sadly), I don’t know why.”― Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“Mark Twain, cynical about so much else, has a particular reverence in the Holy Land for “sitting where a god has stood”. What flabbergasted him was that his traveling companions would be in such a sanctified environment and winter what they saw according to other writers or their denominational background instead their own experience with the holy.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Mark Twain.

“Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.”

“Mary Jane she set at the head of the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was—and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop, and said so—said ‘How do you get biscuits to brown so nice?’ and ‘Where, for the land’s sake, did you get these amaz’n pickles?’ and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Maturity…is fatal to so many enchantments.”― Mark Twain, Carnival of Crime

“Mauritius was made first, and then heaven; and heaven was copied after Mauritius.”― Mark Twain, quote, Mauritius, beauty, island nation, nature, climate,

“Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let’s go on trying.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“me that it had been many years since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man adventurous enough to undertake”― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“Meat first, and spoon vittles to top off on.”― Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“memories which some day will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that incumbers them shall have faded out of our minds never again to return.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Men have nothing in common with me–there is no point of contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin’s head. Can you imagine an elephant being interested in him– caring whether he is happy or isn’t, or whether he is wealthy or poor, whether his sweetheart returns his love or not, whether his mother is sick or well, whether he is looked up to in society or not, whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him, whether his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail, whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a foreign land? These things can never be important to the elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider–he cannot get down to that remote level; I have nothing against man. The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Mere life is a luxury, and the color of the grass, of the flowers, of the sky, the wind in the trees, the outlines of the horizon, the forms of clouds, all give a pleasure as exquisite as the sweetest music to the ear famishing for it. The”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“Mighty has been the advance of the nations and the liberalization of thought. A result of it is a changed Deity, a Deity of a dignity and sublimity proportioned to the majesty of His office and the magnitude of His empire, a Deity who has been freed from a hundred fretting chains and will in time be freed from the rest by the several ecclesiastical bodies who have these matters in charge. It was, without doubt, a mistake and a step backward when the Presbyterian Synods of America lately decided, by vote, to leave Him still embarrassed with the dogma of infant damnation. Situated as we are, we cannot at present know with how much of anxiety He watched the balloting, nor with how much of grieved disappointment He observed the result.” ― Mark Twain, Europe and Elsewhere

“Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race—the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Monday morning always found him so—because it began another week’s slow suffering in school.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“MONDAY morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found him so—because it began another week’s slow suffering in school. He generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening holiday, it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Part 2.

“Moralizing, I observed, then, that “all that glitters is not gold.” Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and lay it up among my treasures of knowledge, that nothing that glitters is gold. So I learned then, once for all, that gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“Morals are an acquirement, like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis, no man is born with them.”― Mark Twain

“More men go to church than want to.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“MORE” ― Mark Twain, Christian Science

“Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Mosques are plenty, churches are plenty, graveyards are plenty, but morals and whiskey are scarce. The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy. It makes our cheeks burn with shame to see such a thing permitted here in Turkey. We do not mind it so much in Salt Lake, however.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72”

“Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred;”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Most of the houses were of logs—all of them, indeed, except three or four; these latter were frame ones. There were none of brick, and none of stone. There was a log church, with a puncheon floor and slab benches. A puncheon floor is made of logs whose upper surfaces have been chipped flat with the adze. The cracks between the logs were not filled; there was no carpet; consequently, if you dropped anything smaller than a peach, it was likely to go through. The church was perched upon short sections of logs, which elevated it two or three feet from the ground. Hogs slept under there, and whenever the dogs got after them during services, the minister had to wait till the disturbance was over. In winter there was always a refreshing breeze up through the puncheon floor; in summer there were fleas enough for all.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“Most of the world has now outlived good part of these harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South they flourish pretty forcefully still. Not so forcefully as half a generation ago, perhaps, but still forcefully. There, the genuine and wholesome civilization of the nineteenth century is curiously confused and commingled with the Walter Scott Middle-Age sham civilization; and so you have practical, common-sense, progressive ideas, and progressive works; mixed up with the duel, the inflated speech, and the jejune romanticism of an absurd past that is dead, and out of charity ought to be buried.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.”

“Most people can’t bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?”

“Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination”

“Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.”

“Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad thing — ”because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted was so apt to be blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride.” ― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“Mrs Kerslake:” but if there is no chance of being offered a place at Oxford, surely-?”
Simon Kerslake: “Thats not what i said Mother, I shall be an undergraduate at Oxford by the first day of term”

“Must we always kill the people?’
‘Oh, certainly. It’s best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it’s considered best to kill them — except some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they’re ransomed.’
‘Ransomed? What’s that?’
‘I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve seen it in books; and so of course that’s what we’ve got to do.’
‘But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?’
‘Why, blame it all, we’ve GOT to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what’s in the books, and get things all muddled up?’
‘Oh, that’s all very fine to SAY, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ran- somed if we don’t know how to do it to them? — that’s the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?’
‘Well, I don’t know. But per’aps if we keep them till they’re ransomed, it means that we keep them till they’re dead. ‘
‘Now, that’s something LIKE. That’ll answer. Why couldn’t you said that before? We’ll keep them till they’re ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they’ll be, too — eating up everything, and always trying to get loose.’
‘How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there’s a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?’
‘A guard! Well, that IS good. So somebody’s got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that’s foolishness. Why can’t a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?’
‘Because it ain’t in the books so — that’s why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don’t you? — that’s the idea. Don’t you reckon that the people that made the books knows what’s the correct thing to do? Do you reckon YOU can learn ‘em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we’ll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“My acquaintance smiled—not a modern smile, but one that must have gone out of general use many, many centuries ago—and muttered apparently to himself: “Wit ye well, I saw it done .”  Then, after a pause, added: “I did it myself.” By the time I had recovered from the electric surprise of this remark, he was gone. All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick Arms, steeped in a dream of the olden time,” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”― Mark Twain, Notebook

“My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted.” ― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying.”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“My experience of men had long ago taught me that one of the surest ways of begetting an enemy was to do some stranger an act of kindness which should lay upon him the irritating sense of an obligation.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“My financial views are of the most decided character, but they are not likely, perhaps, to increase my popularity with the advocates of inflation. I do not insist upon the special supremacy of rag money or hard money. The great fundamental principle of my life is to take any kind I can get.”― Mark Twain, A Presidential Candidate

“My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a war-whoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out for half price if there was a bidder.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“My memory was never loaded with anything but blank cartridges.”

“My mother had a great deal of trouble with me , but I think she enjoyed it”― Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.”

“My works are like water. The works of the great masters are like wine. But everyone drinks water.- From Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1885”

“My! we couldn’t get him out, Tom. And besides, ‘twouldn’t do any good; they’d ketch him again.” “Yes—so they would. But I hate to hear ’em abuse him so like the dickens when he never done—that.” “I do too, Tom. Lord, I hear ’em say he’s the”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. ‘Fetch up Nell Gwynn,’ he says. They fetch her up. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head!’ And they chop it off. ‘Fetch up Jane Shore,’ he says; and up she comes, Next morning, ‘Chop off her head’—and they chop it off. ‘Ring up Fair Rosamun.’ Fair Rosamun answers the bell. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head.’ And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book—which was a good name and stated the case. You don’t know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old rip of ourn is one of the cleanest I’ve struck in history. Well, Henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. How does he go at it—give notice?—give the country a show? No. All of a sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on. That was his style—he never give anybody a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of Wellington. Well, what did he do? Ask him to show up? No—drownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. S’pose people left money laying around where he was—what did he do? He collared it. S’pose he contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn’t set down there and see that he done it—what did he do? He always done the other thing. S’pose he opened his mouth—what then? If he didn’t shut it up powerful quick he’d lose a lie every time. That’s the kind of a bug Henry was; and if we’d a had him along ‘stead of our kings he’d a fooled that town a heap worse than ourn done. I don’t say that ourn is lambs, because they ain’t, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they ain’t nothing to that old ram, anyway. All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they’re a mighty ornery lot. It’s the way they’re raised.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finntags: henry-the-eighth, kings7

“My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He WAS a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. ’Fetch up Nell Gwynn,’ he says. They fetch her up. Next morning, ’Chop off her head!’ And they chop it off. ’Fetch up Jane Shore,’ he says; and up she comes, Next morning, ’Chop off her head’— and they chop it off. ’Ring up Fair Rosamun.’ Fair Rosamun answers the bell. Next morning, ’Chop off her head.’ And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book—which was a good name and stated the case.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“myself—and the Supreme Grand High-yu-Muck-amuck and head of” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.”

“Names are not always what they seem.”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“Naturally the question suggests itself, Why did these people want the river now when nobody had wanted it in the five preceding generations? Apparently it was because at this late day they thought they had discovered a way to make it useful; for it had come to be believed that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of California, and therefore afforded a short cut from Canada to China. Previously the supposition had been that it emptied into the Atlantic, or Sea of Virginia.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Nature has no originality–I mean, no large ability in the matter of inventing new things, new ideas, new stage effects. She has a superb and amazing and infinitely varied equipment of old ones, but she never adds to them. She repeats–repeats–repeats–repeats. Examine your memory and your experience; you will find it is true.”

“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”

“Near by is an interesting ruin—the meagre remains of an ancient heathen temple—a place where human sacrifices were offered up in those old bygone days when the simple child of Nature, yielding momentarily to sin when sorely tempted, acknowledged his error when calm reflection had shown it him, and came forward with noble frankness and offered up his grandmother as an atoning sacrifice—in those old days when the luckless sinner could keep on cleansing his conscience and achieving periodical happiness as long as his relations held out;”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“Necessity is the mother of taking chances.”

“Necessity knows no law.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”

“Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”

“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”

“Never be haughty to the humble, never be humble to the haughty.”

“Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.”

“Never knew before what eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German.”

“Never learn to do anything: if you don’t learn, you’ll always find someone else to do it for you.”

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”

“Never let your education interfere with your learning.”

“Never miss a good chance to shut up.”

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”

“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”

“Never regret anything that made you smile”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”

“New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.”

“New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

“Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh–not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall.  The Shepherdsons done the same.  It was pretty ornery preaching — all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.”― Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

“No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.”― Mark Twain

“No brute ever does a cruel thing—that is the monopoly of those with the Moral Sense.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.”― Mark Twain, The Gilded Age

“No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances–the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and diligent cultivation–therefore, it goes without saying that this one ought to be taught in the public schools–even in the newspapers. What chance has the ignorant uncultivated liar against the educated expert?”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances–the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying.”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted.”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it,”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“No man is a failure who has friends.”

“No narrative that tells the facts of a man’s life in the man’s own words can be uninteresting.”

“No one in the world speaks blemishless grammar; no one has ever written it–NO one, either in the world or out of it (taking the Scriptures for evidence on the latter point); therefore it would not be fair to exact grammatical perfection from the peoples of the Valley; but they and all other peoples may justly be required to refrain from KNOWINGLY and PURPOSELY debauching their grammar.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“no people in the world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must begin in blood, whatever may answer afterward. If”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“No ship can out sail death”

“No you can’t.” “I can.” “You can’t.” “Can!” “Can’t!” An uncomfortable pause. Then Tom said: “What’s your name?” “’Tisn’t any of your business, maybe.” “Well I ’low I’ll MAKE it my business.” “Well why don’t you?” “If you say much, I will.” “Much—much—MUCH. There now.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“No! You mean you’re the late CHarlemagne; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least.”
“Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude.”― Mark Twain

“No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of the word; they have not deserved it . . .
It is like your paltry race–always lying, always claiming virtues which it hasn’t got, always denying them to the higher animals, which alone posses them. No brute ever does a cruel thing–that is the monopoly of those with the Moral Sense. When a brute inflicts pain he does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting it–only man does that. Inspired by that mongrel Morel Sense of his! A sense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with liberty to choose which of them he will do. Now what advantage can he get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine time out of ten he prefers the wrong. There shouldn’t be any wrong; and without the Moral Sense there couldn’t be any. And yet he is such an unreasoning creature that he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades him to the bottom layer of animated beings and is a shameful possession. Are you feeling better? Let me show you something.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart—if you have one—you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Nobody could infer the master-mind in the top of that edifice from the edifice itself.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.”

“None are so ready to find fault with others as those who do things worthy of blame themselves.”― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“None of us could live with an habitual truth-teller; but thank goodness none of us has to.” ― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Not a sparrow falls to the ground without His seeing it.” “But it falls, just the same. What good is seeing it fall?”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time—just as men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Not long after, as Tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his drenched garments by the light of”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Nothing could divert them from the regular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the Church.  More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage, stop to pray before cutting his throat; more than once I had seen a noble, after ambushing and despatching his enemy, retire to the nearest wayside shrine and humbly give thanks, without even waiting to rob the body.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought.”

“Nothing exists. All is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you…. And you are not you—you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“Nothing exists; all is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you!”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Nothing exists; all is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you!” “I!” “And you are not you—you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream—your dream, creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me…. “I am perishing already—I am failing—I am passing away. In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever—for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth. – More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927”― Mark Twain

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything precious”

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.”

“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.”

“NOTICE
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
Per G.G.,Chief of Ordnance”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Notwithstanding all this furniture, there was still room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat in, at least with entire security to the cat. However, the room was large, for a ship’s stateroom, and was in every way satisfactory.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Now a witness was called who testified that he found Muff Potter washing in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the murder was discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. After some further questioning, counsel for the prosecution said: “Take the witness.” The prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again when his own counsel said: “I have no questions to ask him.” The next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse. Counsel for the prosecution said: “Take the witness.” “I have no questions to ask him,” Potter’s lawyer replied. A third witness swore he had often seen the knife in Potter’s possession. “Take the witness.” Counsel for Potter declined to question him. The faces of the audience began to betray annoyance. Did this attorney mean to throw away his client’s life without an effort?”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Now he found out a new thing – namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”

“Now he found out a new thing–namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”

“Now he found out a new thing—namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb: Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain –adults and wise persons never speak it.”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece—all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round— more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.”― Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece—all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round— more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent”― Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Now then, in the earth these people cannot stand much church — an hour and a quarter is the limit, and they draw the line at once a week. That is to say, Sunday. One day in seven; and even then they do not look forward to it with longing. And so — consider what their heaven provides for them: “church” that lasts forever, and a Sabbath that has no end! They quickly weary of this brief hebdomadal Sabbath here, yet they long for that eternal one; they dream of it, they talk about it, they think they think they are going to enjoy it — with all their simple hearts they think they think they are going to be happy in it!”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Now there you have a sample of man’s “reasoning powers,” as he calls them. He observes certain facts. For instance, that in all his life he never sees the day that he can satisfy one woman; also, that no woman ever sees the day that she can’t overwork, and defeat, and put out of commission any ten masculine plants that can be put to bed to her. He puts those strikingly suggestive and luminous facts together, and from them draws this astonishing conclusion: The Creator intended the woman to be restricted to one man.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Now what has kept your leaves so green,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont?
The children’s tears! They brought each grief,
And you did comfort them and cheer
Their bruisèd hearts, and steal a tear
That, healèd, rose a leaf.
XXXX
And what has built you up so strong,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont?
The children’s love! They’ve loved you long
Ten hundred years, in sooth,
They’ve nourished you with praise and song,
And warmed your heart and kept it young—
A thousand years of youth!
XXXXX
Bide always green in our young hearts,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont!
And we shall always youthful be,
Not heeding Time his flight;
And when, in exile wand’ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
O, rise upon our sight!” ― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Vol 1

“Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river!”

“Now, children, I want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty as you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. There – that is it. That is the way good little boys and girls should do. I see one little girl who is looking out of the window – I am afraid she thinks I am out there somewhere – perhaps up in one of the trees making a speech to the little birds. [Applausive titter.]”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.”

“Now, we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the German Language.  I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she began to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously took the very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words had been water, I had been drowned, sure.  She had exactly the German way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die.  Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”

“O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst.”― Mark Twain, The War Prayer

“O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don’t you rob your church?”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.”― Mark Twain, Notebook

“Occasionally, merely for the pleasure of being cruel, we put unoffending Frenchmen on the rack with questions framed in the incomprehensible jargon of their native language, and while they writhed, we impaled them, we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own vile verbs and participles.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.”― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC’D And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry? No; such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad hearts round him thickened, ’Twas not from sickness’ shots. No whooping-cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear with spots; Not these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots. Despised love struck not with woe That head of curly knots, Nor stomach troubles laid him low, Young Stephen Dowling Bots. O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul did from this cold world fly By falling down a well. They got him out and emptied him; Alas it was too late; His spirit was gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great. If”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. – Notebook, 1894” ― Sam Clemens

“Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat.”― Samuel Clemens

“Of all God’s creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”

“Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.”

“Of all the animals, man is the only one that lies.”

“Of all the animals, man is the only one who inflicts pain for the pleasure of it.”

“Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.”

“Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only private–though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh.”― Mark Twain, On Masturbation

“Of course we have been to the monster Church of St. Peter,” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time.” ― Mark Twain

“Of course, there are many rich men in the empire, but their money is buried, and they dress in rags and counterfeit poverty.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, & those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied with drink.”

“Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.”― Mark Twain, Christian Science

“Often, as we lay on our faces, a granite boulder, as large as a village church, would start out of the bottom apparently, and seem climbing up rapidly to the surface, till presently it threatened to touch our faces, and we could not resist the impulse to seize an oar and avert the danger.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It : Premium Edition -Illustrated

“Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“Oh, anybody can run a tick down that don’t belong to them. I’m satisfied with it. It’s a good enough tick for me.” “Sho, there’s”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Oh, go to bed!” Dan said that, and went away.
“Oh, yes, it’s all very well to say go to bed when a man makes an argument which another man can’t answer.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Oh, hold on; there’s plenty of pain here—but it don’t kill.  There’s plenty of suffering here, but it don’t last.  You see, happiness ain’t a thing in itself—it’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasant.  That’s all it is.  There ain’t a thing you can mention that is happiness in its own self—it’s only so by contrast with the other thing.  And”― Mark Twain, Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven

“Oh, I dasn’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis she’d take an’ tar de head off’n me. ‘Deed she would.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Oh, no, Misto C –, I hadn’t had no trouble. An’ no joy!” ― Mark Twain, A True Story Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It

“Oh, there spoke the human! He is always pretending that the eternal bliss of heaven is such a priceless boon! Yes, and always keeping out of heaven just as long as he can! At bottom, you see, he is far from being certain about heaven.”

“Oh, they have just a bully time—take ships and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there’s ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships—make ’em walk a plank.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Oh—go on, I’ll take a breath or two—I don’t know where I am, I’m all at sea.” He” ― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can’t learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Old Scratch,1 but laws-a-me! he’s my own dead sister’s boy, poor thing, and I ain’t got” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“On a book by Henry James: “Once you put it down, you simply can’t pick it up.”

“On one of these occasions, “suddenly there hovered around the top of the rock a brightness of unequaled clearness and color, which, in increasingly smaller circles thickened, was the enchanting figure of the beautiful Lore.”― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant island) half a mile long, which had been formed during the past nineteen years. Since there was so much time to spare that nineteen years of it could be devoted to the construction of a mere towhead, where was the use, originally, in rushing this whole globe through in six days?”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Once my imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me a reproachful look out of his shadowy eyes, and it seemed to me that I could rather he had stabbed me than done that. He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep, about his wife and his child; and I thought about a new despair, “This thing that I have done does not end with him; it falls upon them too and they never did me any harm… The man was not in uniform, and was not armed. He was a stranger in the country; that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of him got to preying upon me every night; I could not get rid of it. I could not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war; that all war must be just that — 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. My campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me I was not rightly equipped for this awful business; that war was intended for men, and I for a child’s nurse.”

“Once you’ve put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can’t pick it up again.”

“One can be both entertained and educated and not know the difference”.”

“One day on the plains he had an angry dispute with one of his wagon-drivers, and both drew their revolvers. But the driver was the quicker artist, and had his weapon cocked first. So Slade said it was a pity to waste life on so small a matter, and proposed that the pistols be thrown on the ground and the quarrel settled by a fist-fight. The unsuspected driver agreed, and threw down his pistol-whereupon Slade laughed at his simplicity, and shot him dead!”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt’s yellow cat came along, purring, eyeing the teaspoon avariciously, and begging for a taste. Tom said: “Don’t ask for it unless you want it, Peter.” But Peter signified that he did want it. “You better make sure.” Peter was sure. “Now you’ve asked for it, and I’ll give it to you, because there ain’t anything mean about me; but if you find you don’t like it, you mustn’t blame anybody but your own self.” Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter. “Tom, what on earth ails that cat?” “I don’t know, aunt,” gasped the boy. “Why, I never see anything like it. What did make him act so?”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“One day, riding along, we were talking about Joan’s great talents, and he said, ‘But, greatest of all her gifts, she has the seeing eye.’ I said, like an unthinking fool, ‘The seeing eye?—I shouldn’t count on that for much—I suppose we all have it.’ ‘No,’ he said; ‘very few have it.’ Then he explained, and made his meaning clear. He said the common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn’t indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn’t detect.”― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc – Vol I

“One finds out a great many wonderful things, by traveling, if he stumbles upon the right person.” ― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a women is, until
after considerable acquaintance with her.” ― Mark Twain

“One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“One is often surprised at the juvenilities which grown people indulge in at sea, and the interest they take in them, and the consuming enjoyment they get out of them.”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator

“One learns people through the heart, not through the eyes or the intellect.”

“One lives to find out.”

“One must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can’t tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through thick and thin.”― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“One mustn’t criticize other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself”

“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”

“One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it. They also believed the world was flat.”

“one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it;”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“One poor chap, who had no other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the remembrance: ‘Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once.’ But that bid for glory was a failure. Most of the boys could say that, and so that cheapened the distinction too much.” ~From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Scene where the neighbor boys were lamenting over Tom’s apparent drowning.”

“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”

“One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said “Shall I Never See Thee More Alas.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“One wearies of everything in this world, even happiness. Did” ― Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 2

“One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver—not aloud, but to himself—that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness.”― Mark Twain

“Our consciences take NO notice of pain inflicted upon others until it reaches a point where it gives pain to US. In ALL cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to another person’s pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable.”― Mark Twain, What is Man?

“Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.”

“Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.”― Mark Twain, On Religion

“Ours is the “land of the free” — nobody denies that — nobody challenges it. [Maybe it is because we won’t let other people testify.]”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.”

“Outside influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left to himself, he wouldn’t get regulated at all, and the sort of time he would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches, with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am a Waterbury.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“Over middle of mantel, engraving—Washington Crossing the Delaware; on the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-lightning crewels by one of the young ladies—work of art which would have made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he could have foreseen what advantage was going to be taken of it.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”

“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you want.”

“Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.”

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.”

“Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.”

“People always more and more foolish, unless they take care to grow wiser and wiser”

“People don’t really read your books, they only say they do, to keep you from feeling bad.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition

“People talk about beautiful relationships between two persons of the same sex. What is the best of that sort as compared with the friendship of man and wife where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same? There is no place for comparison between the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“People were thicker than bees, in those narrow streets, and the men were dressed in all the outrageous, outlandish, idolatrous, extravagant, thunder-and-lightning costumes that ever a tailor with the delirium tremens and seven devils could conceive of. There”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“People who do not read have no advantage over those who can not read.”

“Perfect grammar–persistent, continuous, sustained–is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it.”

“Perhaps I ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and make allowances. She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can’t speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she is color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in the wastes of space — none of them is of any practical value, so far as I can see, but because they have color and majesty, that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them. If she could quiet down and keep still a couple of minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle. In that cases I think I could enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could, for I am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature — lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder, with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching the flight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she was beautiful.”― Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huck Finn

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons  attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. B”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.”

“Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside is pleasant; walking the quarterdeck in the moonlight is pleasant; smoking in the breezy foretop is pleasant when one is not afraid to go up there; but these are all feeble and commonplace compared with the joy of seeing people suffering the miseries of seasickness.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly invention),” ― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.” ― Mark Twain (Author)

“Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and very deep—for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. Said she: “Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn’t it?” “Yes’m.” “Powerful warm, warn’t it?” “Yes’m.” “Didn’t you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?” A bit of a scare shot through Tom—a touch of uncomfortable suspicion. He searched Aunt Polly’s face, but it told him nothing. So he said: “No’m—well, not very much.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Poor little doggie, you saved HIS child!”― Mark Twain, A Dog’s Tale

“Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same—she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion—there warn’t no back-down to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain’t no flattery. And when it comes to beauty—and goodness, too—she lays over them all. I hain’t ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door; no, I hain’t ever seen her since, but I reckon I’ve thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever I’d a thought it would do any good for me to pray for HER, blamed if I wouldn’t a done it or bust.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Presently a serpent sought them out privately, and came to them walking upright, which was the way of serpents in those days. The serpent said the forbidden fruit would store their vacant minds with knowledge. So they ate it, which was quite natural, for man is so made that he eagerly wants to know; whereas the priest, like God, whose imitator and representative he is, has made it his business from the beginning to keep him from knowing any useful thing.”  ― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Presently a vagrant poodle dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Part 2.

“Presently he turned to me and said, just as one might speak of the weather, or any other common matter— “You know about transmigration of souls; do you know about transposition of epochs—and bodies?” I said I had not heard of it.” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was sick; then he could stay home from school.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Part 2.

“Presently she stepped into the kitchen, and Sid, happy in his immunity, reached for the sugar-bowl—a sort of glorying over Tom which was wellnigh unbearable. But Sid’s fingers slipped and the bowl dropped and broke. Tom was in ecstasies. In such ecstasies that he even controlled his tongue and was silent. He” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Presently Tom seized his comrade’s arm and said: “Sh!” “What is it, Tom?” And the two clung together with beating hearts. “Sh! There ’tis again! Didn’t you hear it?” “I–” “There! Now you hear it.” “Lord, Tom, they’re coming! They’re coming, sure. What’ll we do?” “I dono. Think they’ll see us?” “Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn’t come.” “Oh, don’t be afeard. I don’t believe they’ll bother us. We ain’t doing any harm. If we keep perfectly still, maybe they won’t notice us at all.” “I’ll try to, Tom, but, Lord, I’m all of a shiver.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees—something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a “me-yow! me-yow!” down there. That was good! Says I, “me-yow! me-yow!” as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.”

“Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were conspicuous in the hush.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Prophecy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“Prosperity is the best protector of principle.”

“Prov’dence don’t fire no blank ca’tridges, boys.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.”

“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

“Regret fills our bodies when we’ve wronged someone.” ― Mark Twain

“Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.”

“Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.”

“Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.”

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“‎Rise early. It is the early bird that catches the worm. Don’t be fooled by this absurd saw; I once knew a man who tried it. He got up at sunrise and a horse bit him.”

“S’pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy—what would you think?” “I wouldn’ think nuff’n; I’d take en bust him over de head—dat is, if he warn’t white. I wouldn’t ’low no nigger to call me dat.” “Shucks, it ain’t calling you anything. It’s only saying, do you know how to talk French?” “Well, den, why couldn’t he SAY it?” “Why, he IS a-saying it. That’s a Frenchman’s WAY of saying it.” “Well, it’s a blame ridicklous way, en I doan’ want to hear no mo’ ’bout it. Dey ain’ no sense in it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Sage went supperless to bed, and tossed and writhed all night upon a shuck mattress that was full of attentive and interested corncobs.”

“Sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails, explore, dream, discover.”― Mark Twain (Samuel Clements)

“Salle. The white man and the red man struck hands and entertained each other during three days. Then, to the admiration”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, Part 1.

“Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.”

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”

“Satan had been making admiring remarks about certain of the Creator’s sparkling industries — remarks which, being read between the lines, were sarcasms.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Satan hasn’t a single salaried helper; the Opposition employs a million.”

“Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: “It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best–to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its history–but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian–not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Satan must have been pretty simple, even according to the New Testament, or he wouldn’t have led Christ up on a high mountain and offered him the world if he would fall down and worship him. That was a manifestly absurd proposition, because Christ, as the Son of God, already owned the world; and besides, what Satan showed him was only a few rocky acres of Palestine. It is just as if some one should try to buy Rockefeller, the owner of all the Standard Oil Company, with a gallon of kerosene.”

“Satan was accustomed to say that our race lived a life of continuous and uninterrupted self-deception. It duped itself from cradle to grave with shams and delusions which it mistook for realities, and this made its entire life a sham. Of the score of fine qualities which it imagined it had and was vain of, it really possessed hardly one. It regarded itself as gold, and was only brass.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Satan was not disturbed, but I could not endure it, and had to be whisked out of there. I was faint and sick, but the fresh air revived me, and we walked toward my home. I said it was a brutal thing. “No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it,” and he went on talking like that. “It is like your paltry race—always lying, always claiming virtues which it hasn’t got, always denying them to the higher animals, which alone possess them. No brute ever does a cruel thing—that is the monopoly of those with the Moral Sense. When a brute inflicts pain he does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting it—only man does that. Inspired by that mongrel Moral Sense of his!”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Satan!” “Oh, it’s true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don’t dare to assert themselves.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“SATAN’S LETTER
This is a strange place, and extraordinary place, and interesting. There is nothing resembling it at home. The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young, the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom, and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above, it was green with vegetation, and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh,” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Say, do we kill the women too?”
“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn’t let on. Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you’re always as polite as pie to them; and by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home anymore.”

“Say—what is dead cats good for, Huck?” “Good for? Cure warts with.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Schoolboy days are no happier than the days of afterlife, but we look back upon them regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school and how we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed – because we have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of the canonized ethic and remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden-sword pageants, and its fishing holidays.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education—next, freedom—and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any Established Church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my own former day—in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time—there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free country: a “free” country with the Corporation Act and the Test still in force in it—timbers propped against men’s liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established Anachronism with.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Shall I be car-ri-ed toe the skies, on flow’ry beds of ease, Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro’ blood-y seas? He”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Shall I be car-ri-ed toe the skies, on flow’ry beds of ease, Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro’ blood-y”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Shaxpur.—In the great hand of God I stand and so proclaim mine innocence. Though ye sinless hosts of heaven had foretold ye coming of this most desolating breath, proclaiming it a work of uninspired man, its quaking thunders, its firmament-clogging rottenness his own achievement in due course of nature, yet had not I believed it; but had said the pit itself hath furnished forth the stink, and heaven’s artillery hath shook the globe in admiration of it.”― Mark Twain, 1601 Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors

“she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the
notion—there warn’t no back-down to her, I judge.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to deserve them or die.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“she makes me wash, they make me comb all to thunder; she won’t let me sleep in the woodshed… the widder [widow] eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she wakes up by a bell-everything’s so awful reg’lar a body can’t stand it”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“She never used large words, but she had a natural gift for making small ones do effective work.”

“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.”

“She said all a body would have to do there [Heaven] was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“She warn’t particular; she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful. Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her “tribute” before he was cold. She called them tributes.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“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.”

“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

“She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the tomato vines and “jimpson” weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and shouted:”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless and vulgar and bad—and because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like him.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“[S]in takes on new and real terrors when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out.”

“Sing like no one is listening, love like you never been hurt, dance like no one is watching and live like it is heaven on earth.”

“Sir Walter Scott created rank & caste in the South and also reverence for and pride and pleasure in them. Life on the Mississippi
Don Quixote swept admiration for medieval chivalry-silliness out of existence. Ivanhoe restored it. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Six miles below town a fat and battered brick chimney, sticking above the magnolias and live-oaks, was pointed out as the monument erected by an appreciative nation to celebrate the battle of New Orleans–Jackson’s victory over the British, January 8, 1815. The war had ended, the two nations were at peace, but the news had not yet reached New Orleans. If we had had the cable telegraph in those days, this blood would not have been spilt, those lives would not have been wasted; and better still, Jackson would probably never have been president. We have gotten over the harms done us by the war of 1812, but not over some of those done us by Jackson’s presidency.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Slade had to kill several men—some say three, others say four, and others six—but the world was the richer for their loss.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do most any thing and I believe him.”

“So endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man. When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop—that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can. Most” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“So I gave up the idea of a circus, and concluded he was from an asylum.  But we never came to an asylum—so I was up a stump, as you may say.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“So I held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn’t begun yet; and then I slipped down the ladder.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“So I hove a brick through his window…”

“So I learned then, that gold in it’s native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It, Vol 1

“So I think it is a reptile, though it may be architecture.”― Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

“So it shows that for all the brag you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of it for real unerringness. Jim says the same.”― Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad

“So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: “Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor’s religion is.” Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.”― Mark Twain

“So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty or thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that the boat seemed floating in the air!” ― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times—and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and said they’d think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn’t do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to work on the pirates. When”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“So the tiresome minutes and decades of minutes dragged away, until at last our tense forms filmed over with a dulled consciousness,”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.”― Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“So there ain’t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it and ain’t going to no more.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Solomon, who was one of the Deity’s favorites, had a copulation cabinet composed of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. To save his life he could not have kept two of these young creatures satisfactorily refreshed, even if he had fifteen experts to help him. Necessarily almost the entire thousand had to go hungry for years and years on a stretch. Conceive of a man hardhearted enough to look daily upon all that suffering and not be moved to mitigate it.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Some German words are so long that they have a perspective.”― Mark Twain, The Awful German Language / Die schreckliche deutsche Sprache

“Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, & over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite–but they all worship money.”

“Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.”

“Some people scorn a cat and think it not an essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.”

“Some things you can’t find out; but you will never know you can’t by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can’t find out.”― Mark Twain, Eve’s Diary

“Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“Sometimes I wish we could hear of a country that’s out of kings.”

“Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

“Sometimes too much drink is barely enough.”

“Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to git well agin.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I’m a laying up sin and suffering for us both, I”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I’m a laying up sin and suffering for us both,”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as are physical appetites, complexions, and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it;” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as are physical appetites, complexions, and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it; and, besides, I was afraid of a united Church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought.” ― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“S’pose a man was to come to you and say Pollyvoo-franzy – what would you think?”

“Stars and shadows ain’t good to see by.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Stars are good, too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. When they first showed, last night, I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn’t reach, which astonished me; then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never got one. It was because I am left-handed and cannot throw good. Even when I aimed at the one I wasn’t after I couldn’t hit the other one, though I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into the midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if I could have held out a little longer maybe I could have got one.”― Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

“Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so. – Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar” ― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“Stay away from people who belittle your ambition, small people do that, but great people make you like to be great!”

“Steal a chicken if you get a chance, Huck, because if you don’t want it, someone else does and a good deed ain’t never forgotten.”

“Still, it is true, lamb,” said Satan. “Look at you in war—what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!” “In war? How?” “There has never been a just one, never an honorable one—on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful—as usual—will shout for the war. The pulpit will—warily and cautiously—object—at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, “It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.” Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers—as earlier—but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation—pulpit and all—will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago–centuries, ages, eons, ago!–for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane–like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell–mouths mercy and invented hell–mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!”

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

“Such incidents usually move me to try to find relief in the building of a maxim. It is a good way, because if you have luck you can get the venom out of yourself and into the maxim; then comfort and a healed spirit follow. Maxims are not easy to make; they do not come in right shape at the first call; they are creatures of evolution, of development; you have to try several plans before you get one that suits you, or even comes fairly near to suiting you.” ― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“Such is the human race. Often it seems such a pity that Noah.. didn’t miss the boat.”

“Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don’t you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot; and there ain’t any real difference between triplets and a insurrection.- The Babies speech 1879”

“Summer is the time when it is too hot to do the job that it was too cold to do last winter.”

“Sunday morning came – next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams – visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation”― Mark Twain, The War Prayer

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

“suppose you were an idiot”
“will masturbate until he hath enrich’d whole acres with his seed.” ― Mark Twain, 1601 Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors

“Supposing is good, but finding out is better.”

“Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started to climb the tree-”
“What the Bull?”
“Of course- who else?”
“But a bull can’t climb a tree.”
“He can’t can he? Since you know so much about it, did you ever see a bull try?”
“No! I never dreamt of such a thing.”
Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because you never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can’t be done?”― Mark Twain

“Susan bathing, surprised by the two old man. In the background the lapidation of the condemned.” (“Lapidation” is good; it is much more elegant than “stoning.”) “St.” ― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad – Volume 03

“Switzerland would me a mighty big place if it were ironed flat.”

“Syrian travel has its interesting features, like travel in any other part of the world, and yet to break your leg or have the cholera adds a welcome variety to it.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.”― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses

“T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.”― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses

“Take an instance: the removal of the motto [In God We Trust] fetched out a clamor from the pulpit; little groups and small conventions of clergymen gathered themselves together all over the country, and one of these little groups, consisting of twenty-two ministers, put up a prodigious assertion unbacked by any quoted statistics and passed it unanimously in the form of a resolution: the assertion, to wit, that this is a Christian country. Why, Carnegie, so is hell. Those clergymen know that, inasmuch as “Strait is the way and narrow is the gate, and few — few — are they that enter in thereat” has had the natural effect of making hell the only really prominent Christian community in any of the worlds; but we don’t brag of this and certainly it is not proper to brag and boast that America is a Christian country when we all know that certainly five-sixths of our population could not enter in at the narrow gate.”

“Talk? Well, it’s just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the time. It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so’s I want to hide som’ers.” “That’s just the same way they go on round me. I reckon he’s a goner. Don’t you feel sorry for him, sometimes?” “Most always—most always. He ain’t”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Thankfully, though, personalities are not born ugly; they are learned ugly”― Mark Twain / Philip Stead

“Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for — annually, not oftener — if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man’s side, consequently on the Lord’s side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.”

“THANKSGIVING DAY. Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys; they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji.”― Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson

“that dismal prison house within whose dungeons so many young faces put on the wrinkles of age,”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“That is the new miracle, and the greatest of all–Automatic Law!” ― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

“That kind of so-called housekeeping where they have six Bibles and no cork-screw.”

“That was thirteen hundred years ago. This is really no improvement upon the work of the Roman augurs. Has the trade of interpreting the Lord’s matters gone out, discouraged by the time-worn fact that nobody succeeds at it? No, it still flourishes; there was never a century nor a country that was short of experts who knew the Deity’s mind and were willing to reveal it. Whenever there has been an opportunity to attribute to Him reasonings and conduct which would make a half-witted human being ridiculous, there has always been an expert ready and glad to take advantage of it.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“That which I have seen, in that little moment, will never go out from my memory, but will abide there; and I shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the nights, till I die. Would God I had been blind!”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“That,” he said, as they turned out into the broad main road, with its long vista of telegraph poles, “is because you have been neglecting the real for the sham, flowers themselves for their artificially distilled perfume. What I was going to try and put into words without sounding too priggish, Lady Cynthia,” he went on, “is this. It is just you people who are cursed with a restless brain who are in the most dangerous position, nowadays. The things which keep us healthy and normal physically—games, farces, dinner-parties of young people, fresh air and exercise — are the very things which after a time fail to satisfy the person with imagination. You want more out of life, always the something you don’t understand, the something beyond. And so you keep on trying new things, and for every new thing you try, you drop an old one. Isn’t it something like that?” ― Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die, Vol.1

“That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace.”

“That’s the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don’t care, individuals do.”― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“That’s the way with a cat, you know — any cat; they don’t give a damn for discipline. And they can’t help it, they’re made so. But it ain’t really insubordination, when you come to look at it right and fair — it’s a word that don’t apply to a cat. A cat ain’t ever anybody’s slave or serf or servant, and can’t be — it ain’t in him to be. And so, he don’t have to obey anybody. He is the only creature in heaven or earth or anywhere that don’t have to obey somebody or other, including the angels. It sets him above the whole ruck, it puts him in a class by himself. He is independent. You understand the size of it? He is the only independent person there is. In heaven or anywhere else. There’s always somebody a king has to obey — a trollop, or a priest, or a ring, or a nation, or a deity or what not — but it ain’t so with a cat. A cat ain’t servant nor slave to anybody at all. He’s got all the independence there is, in Heaven or anywhere else, there ain’t any left over for anybody else. He’s your friend, if you like, but that’s the limit — equal terms, too, be you king or be you cobbler; you can’t play any I’m-better-than-you on a cat — no, sir! Yes, he’s your friend, if you like, but you got to treat him like a gentleman, there ain’t any other terms. The minute you don’t, he pulls freight.”

“The ability to find solutions to life’s challenges is what makes us grow as a person.”

“The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be?–it is the same the angels breathe.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be? — it is the same the angels breathe.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the head of navigation and the end of the world. The information the ancients didn’t have was very voluminous.” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The average human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn’t that, he is a practical joker.”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator

“The average human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn’t that, he is a practical joker. The result to th other person concerned is about the same: that is, he is made to suffer.” ― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“The average man don’t like trouble and danger.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God’s treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them. Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“The best of all lost arts is honesty”

“The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.”

“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.”

“The Bible has noble poetry in it… and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.”

“The billiard table is better than the doctor.”― Mark Twain

“The boys were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could be to anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had asked me a single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it was not.
That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we needed was something to turn up that would call for it.”― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“The captive had broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock- tick–a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome were laid when Christ was crucified; when the Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was “news.” It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in th thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect’s need?” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It, Part 1.

“The Character of Man Concerning Man—he is too large a subject to be treated as a whole; so I will merely discuss a detail or two of him at this time. I desire to contemplate him from this point of view—this premiss: that he was not made for any useful purpose, for the reason that he hasn’t served any; that he was most likely not even made intentionally; and that his working himself up out of the oyster bed to his present position was probably” ― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“The charming island of Rock Island, three miles long and half a mile wide, belongs to the United States, and the Government has turned it into a wonderful park, enhancing its natural attractions by art, and threading its fine forests with many miles of drives. Near the center of the island one catches glimpses, through the trees, of ten vast stone four-story buildings, each of which covers an acre of ground.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“The choir always tittered and whispered all through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago, and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in some foreign country.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The choir always tittered and whispered all through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill bred, but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in some foreign country.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example. It is still clinging to one or two things which were useful once, but which are not useful now, neither are they ornamental.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“The Church still prizes the Moral Sense as man’s noblest asset today, although the Church knows God had a distinctly poor opinion of it and did what he could in his clumsy way to keep his happy Children of the Garden from acquiring it.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“The coat of arms of the human race ought to consist of a man with an axe on his shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone. Or, it ought to represent the several members of the human race holding out the hat to each other. For we are all beggars. Each in his own way. One beggar is too proud to beg for pennies but will beg a loan of dollars, knowing he can’t repay; another will not beg a loan but will beg for a postmastership; another will not do that but will beg for an introduction to “society”; one, being rich, will not beg a hod of coal of the railway company but will beg a pass; his neighbor will not beg coal, nor pass, but in social converse with a lawyer will place before him a supposititious case in the hope of getting an opinion out of him for nothing; one who would disdain to beg for any of these things will beg frankly for the presidency. None of the lot is ashamed of himself, but he despises the rest of the mendicants. Each admires his own dignity, and carefully guards it, but in his opinion the others haven’t any.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”

“The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn’t indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn’t detect.”― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul.”

“The community is eminently Portuguese—that is to say, it is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to die for rags–that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“The coyote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolfskin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spirtless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely! -so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain-like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there like a distant sun. At His feet stood three colossal figures, diminished to extinction, almost, by contrast — archangels — their heads level with His ankle-bone. When the Creator had finished thinking, He said, “I have thought. Behold!” He lifted His hand, and from it burst a fountain-spray of fire, a million stupendous suns, which clove the blackness and soared, away and away and away, diminishing in magnitude and intensity as they pierced the far frontiers of Space, until at last they were but as diamond nail heads sparkling under the domed vast roof of the universe.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

“The crowd swarmed together and followed him at a distance, talking excitedly and asking questions and finding out the facts. Finding out the facts and passing them on to others, with improvements– improvements which soon enlarged the bowl of wine to a barrel, and made the one bottle hold it all and yet remain empty to the last.” ― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“The darling mispronunciations of childhood! – dear me, there’s no music that can touch it; and how one grieves when it wastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will never visit his bereaved ear again.”

“The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work. – Mark Twain”

“The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“The difference between nonfiction and fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.”

“The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.- Mark Twain (Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888)”― Mark Twain

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

“The difference between the ALMOST right word and the RIGHT word is really quite a large matter. It’s the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightening and the lightening bug.”

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug” (Mark Twain),” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug.”

“The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense.”

“…the dollar their god, how to get it their religion.” ― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man’s.”

“The Doors Open at 7, The trouble begins at 8.”

“The dream vocabulary shaves meanings finer and closer than do the world’s daytime dictionaries.”

“The driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible dangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the grinding of the wheels through the muddy gravel; and the low wailing of the wind; and all the time we had that absurd sense upon us, inseparable from travel at night in a close-curtained vehicle, the sense of remaining perfectly still in one place, notwithstanding the jolting and swaying of the vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the grinding of the wheels.” ― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“The duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it; and at last when he’d got everybody’s expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring-streaked-and-striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. And – but never mind the rest of his outfit; it was just wild, but it was awful funny. The people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done it over again, and after that they made him do it another time. Well, it would make a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“the easiest way to get along in life is to not cause too many quarrels”

“The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”

“The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one’s religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one’s religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life–hence it is a valuable possession to him.” ― Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“The English youth’s face simply showed a lively surprise, but nothing more. He went swinging along valleyward again, as if he did not know he had just swindled a coroner” ― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“The expeditions were often out of meat, and scant of clothes, but they always had the furniture and other requisites for the mass; they were always prepared, as one of the quaint chroniclers of the time phrased it, to ‘explain hell to the savages.” ― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“The exquisitely bad is as satisfying to the soul as the exquisitely good. Only the mediocre is unendurable.”

“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”

“The fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he was a man; and when a man is a man, you can’t knock it out of him.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.” ― Mark Twain, What is Man?

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

“The first glance at the pillow showed me a repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it–cockroaches as large as peach leaves–fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors’ toe nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas were throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they stuck. I was beginning to feel really annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck.
The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-island schooner life.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.”

“The first most important day of you life is the day you were born. The second is when you discover why.”

“The first time the Deity came down to earth, he brought life and death; when he came the second time, he brought hell.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“The frankest and freest and privatest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter…”― Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

“The full moon was riding high in the cloudless heavens, now. We sauntered carelessly and unthinkingly to the edge of the lofty battlements of the citadel, and looked down — a vision! And such a vision! Athens by moonlight! The prophet that thought the splendors of the New Jerusalem were revealed to him, surely saw this instead!” ― Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label.”― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it’s all together. It’s downright inhuman to split it up. But that’s just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German (from “Disappearance of Literature)”― Mark Twain

“The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called “separable verbs.” The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance.”

“The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called “separable verbs.” The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one is reiste ab—which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English: “The trunks being now ready, he de- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, parted.” However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs. One is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it. Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, sie, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six—and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.”― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it…”

“The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.”

“The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.”

“The governor had made up his mind to one thing: Joan was either a witch or a saint, and he meant to find out which it was.”― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Volumes 1 & 2

“The grave of Adam! How touching it was, here in a land of strangers, far away from home, & friends, & all who cared for me thus to discover the grave of a blood relation. True, a distant one, but still a relation.”

“The guide showed us a coffee-colored piece of sculpture which he said was considered to have come from the hand of Phidias, since it was not possible that any other artist, of any epoch, could have copied nature with such faultless accuracy. The figure was that of a man without a skin; with every vein, artery, muscle, every fibre and tendon and tissue of the human frame, represented in detail. It looked natural, because somehow it looked as if it were in pain. A skinned man would be likely to look that way, unless his attention were occupied with some other matter. It was a hideous thing, and yet there was a fascination about it some where. I am sorry I saw it, because I shall always see it, now. I shall dream of it, sometimes. I shall dream that it is resting its corded arms on the bed’s head and looking down on me with its dead eyes; I shall dream that it is stretched between the sheets with me and touching me with its exposed muscles and its stringy cold legs.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“The history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.”

“The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.”

“The hotel-keeper, the postmaster, the blacksmith, the mayor, the constable, the city marshal and the principal citizen and property holder, all came out and greeted us cheerily, and we gave him good day.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”

“The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.”

“The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French.”

“The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.”― Mark Twain, How to Tell a Story and Other Essays

“The hunter concealed himself and imitated the turkey-call by sucking the air through the leg-bone of a turkey which had previously answered a call like that and lived only just long enough to regret it. There is nothing that furnishes a perfect turkey-call except that bone. Another of Nature’s treacheries, you see. She is full of them; half the time she doesn’t know which she likes best—to betray her child or protect it.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“The idea of you lynching anybody! It’s amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you’re brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man’s safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind – as long as it’s day-time and you’re not behind him.”

“The Indian may seem poor to we rich Westerners but in matters of the spirit it is we who are the paupers and they who are millionaires.”

“The institution of royalty in any form is an insult to the human race.”― Mark Twain author and humorist 18351910

“The inventor of their heaven empties into it all the nations of the earth, in one common jumble. All are on an equality absolute, no one of them ranking another; they have to be “brothers”; they have to mix together, pray together, harp together, hosannah together — whites, niggers, Jews, everybody — there’s no distinction. Here in the earth all nations hate each other, and every one of them hates the Jew. Yet every pious person adores that heaven and wants to get into it. He really does. And when he is in a holy rapture he thinks he thinks that if he were only there he would take all the populace to his heart, and hug, and hug, and hug!”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“The Jabalites …. They worship no god; and if we in goodness of heart do send a missionary to show them the way of life, they listen with respect to all he hath to say, and then they eat him. This doth tend to hinder the spread of light.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done – these are traits of the human race at large.”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done–these are traits of the human race at large. We white people are merely modified Thugs; Thugs fretting under the restraints of a not very thick skin of civilization; Thugs who long ago enjoyed the slaughter of the Roman arena, and later the burning of doubtful Christians by authentic Christians in the public squares, and who now, with the Thugs of Spain and Nimes, flock to enjoy the blood and misery of the bull-ring. We have no tourists of either sex or any religion who are able to resist the delights of the bull-ring when opportunity offers; and we are gentle Thugs in the hunting-season, and love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it. Still, we have made some progress–microscopic, and in truth scarcely worth mentioning, and certainly nothing to be proud of–still it is progress: we no longer take pleasure in slaughtering or burning helpless men. We have reached a little altitude where we may look down upon the Indian Thugs with a complacent shudder; and we may even hope for a day, many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us in the same way.”

“the king he allowed he would drop over to t’other village without any plan, but just trust in Providence to lead him the profitable way – meaning the devil, I reckon.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”

“The law roasted her to death at a slow fire.” ― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The love of it is the root of all evil. There it lies, the ancient tempter, newly red with the shame of its latest victory–the dishonor of a priest of God and his two poor juvenile helpers in crime. If it could but speak, let us hope that it would be constrained to confess that of all its conquests this was the basest and the most pathetic.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” –”

“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the fellow who can’t read a line.”

“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage the man who can’t read them”

“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.”

“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.” Mark Twain”― Mark Twain, Quotations by Mark Twain

“The man who speaks an injurious truth lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“The man who speaks an injurious truth lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble.”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivaly of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in fine, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.”

“The ‘Memphis Avalanche’ reports that the Professor’s course met with pretty general approval in the community; knowing that the law was powerless, in the actual condition of public sentiment, to protect him, he protected himself.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to realize your fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference between hearing of a man being stabbed to the heart, and seeing it done.”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“The mere mention of a witch was almost enough to frighten us out of our wits. This was natural enough, because of late years there were more kinds of witches than there used to be; in old times it had been only old women, but of late years they were of all ages—even children of eight and nine; it was getting so that anybody might turn out to be a familiar of the Devil—age and sex hadn’t anything to do with it. In our little region we had tried to extirpate the witches, but the more of them we burned the more of the breed rose up in their places.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“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.”

“The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod – and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Tom Sawyer

“The Mississippi River towns are comely, clean, well built, and pleasing to the eye, and cheering to the spirit. The Mississippi Valley is as reposeful as a dreamland, nothing worldly about it . . . nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“The moon got loose last night, and slid
down and fell out of the scheme–a very great loss; it breaks my heart
to think of it. There isn’t another thing among the ornaments and
decorations that is comparable to it for beauty and finish. It should
have been fastened better. If we can only get it back again-” ― Mark Twain

“The Moral Sense teaches us what is right, and how to avoid it–when unpopular.”

“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.”

“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog”

“The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.”

“‎The most important days in your life are the day you were born……..and the day you find out why.”

“The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.”

“The nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which from which.”

“The nomadic instinct is a human instinct; it was born with Adam and transmitted through the patriarchs, and after thirty centuries of steady effort, civilization has not educated it entirely out of us yet. It”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The nomadic instinct is a human instinct;”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story—that is to say, thirty or forty years ago. Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. THE AUTHOR. HARTFORD, 1876. CHAPTER I “TOM!” No answer. “TOM!” No answer. “What’s gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story—that is to say, thirty or forty years ago.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for “style,” not service — she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for “style,” not service—she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked THROUGH them for so”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Part 1.

“The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and disappeared over it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and disappeared over it. His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle laugh.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The old one is tamer than it was, and can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty in a highly developed degree. I shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot, and yet I ought not to be astonished, for it has already been everything else it could think of, since those first days when it was a fish. The new one is as ugly now as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. She calls it Abel. Ten Years Later They are boys; we found it out long ago. It was their coming in that small, immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it. There are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, but if Cain had stayed a bear it would have improved him. After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.”― Mark Twain, Mark Twain: Collection of 51 Classic Works with analysis and historical background (Annotated and Illustrated)

“The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.”

“The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.” Mark Twain”― Mark Twain, Quotations by Mark Twain

“The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.”

“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.”

“The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“The only way to win a toxic person, is not to play,”

“The painful thing observable about all this business was, the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor … This man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it.”― Mark Twain A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“The passengers are not garrulous, but still they are sociable.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad – Complete Version

“The pause – that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, howsoever felicitous, could accomplish it.”

“The pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to scenes and sounds ofy boyhood days: “N-e-e-ew Haven! ten minutes for refreshments–knductor’ll strike the gong-bell two minutes before train leaves–passengers for the Shore-linr please take seats in the rear k’yar, this k’yar don’t go no furder–ahh-pls, aw-rnjz, b’nanners, s-a-n-d’ches, p—-op-corn!” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court 3

“The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.”

“The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is—a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers.” ― Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is–a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“The poetry was all in the anticipation – there is none in the reality.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“The poor morsel of food only whetted desire.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddle-bow in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him–why, certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it’s a sarcasm just the same.”

“The preacher who casts a vote for conscience’ sake, runs the risk of starving.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition

“The priest explained the mysteries of the faith ‘by signs,’ for the saving of the savages; thus compensating them with possible possessions in Heaven for the certain ones on earth which they had just been robbed of. And also, by signs, La Salle drew from these simple children of the forest acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the Putrid, over the water. Nobody smiled at these colossal ironies.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.”

“The proverb says that Providence protects children and idiots. This is really true. I know because I have tested it.”

“…the quality of certain scraps of verse which take hold of us and stay in our memories, we do not understand why, at first: all the words being the right words, none of them is conspicuous, and so they all seem inconspicuous, therefore we wonder what it is about them that makes their message take hold.”

“The quality of mercy . . . is twice blessed; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes; ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest. it becomes The thronèd monarch better than his crown.” ― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“The question as to whether there is such a thing as divine right of kings is not settled in this book. It was found too difficult. That the executive head of a nation should be a person of lofty character and extraordinary ability, was manifest and indisputable; that none but the Deity could select that head unerringly, was also manifest and indisputable; that the Deity ought to make that selection, then, was likewise manifest and indisputable; consequently, that He does make it, as claimed, was an unavoidable deduction. I mean, until the author of this book encountered the Pompadour, and Lady Castlemaine, and some other executive heads of that kind; these were found so difficult to work into the scheme, that it was judged better to take the other tack in this book (which must be issued this fall), and then go into training and settle the question in another book. It is, of course, a thing which ought to be settled, and I am not going to have anything particular to do next winter anyway.” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court 3

“The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.”

“The reader must not imagine that he is to find in it wisdom, brilliancy, fertility of invention, ingenuity of construction, excellence of form, purity of style, perfection of imagery, truth to nature, clearness of statement, humanly possible situations, humanly possible people, fluent narrative, connected sequence of events”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“The reason that certain tender subjects are avoided and forbidden in all other clubs is because those clubs consist of more than four members. Whenever the human race assembles to a number exceeding four, it cannot stand free speech. It is the self-admiring boast of England and America that in those countries a man is free to talk out his opinions, let them be of what complexion they may, but this is one of the human race’s hypocrisies; there has never been any such thing as free speech in any country, and there is no such thing as free speech in England or America when more than four persons are present; and not then, except the four are all of one political and religious creed.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“The reason why truth is so much stranger than fiction is that there is no requirement for it to be consistent.”

“The reign of Edward VI was a singularly merciful one for those harsh times. Now that we are taking leave of him let us try to keep this in our minds, to his credit”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“The report of my death was an exaggeration.”― Mark Twain (Samuel L Clemens)

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”

“The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.”

“The saying is old that truth should not be spoken at all times; and those whom a sick conscience worries into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and nuisances.” ― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.”

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

“The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.”

“The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven.”

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”

“The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done.” ― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“The shades of difference between other people and me serve to make variety and prevent monotony, but that is all; broadly speaking, we are all alike; and so by studying myself carefully and comparing myself with other people, and noting the divergences, I have been enabled to acquire a knowledge of the human race which I perceive is more accurate and more comprehensive than that which has been acquired and revealed by any other member of our species. As a result, my private and concealed opinion of myself is not of a complimentary sort. It follows that my estimate of the human race is the duplicate of my estimate of myself.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: A disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke, and tell indelicate stories— and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures.”― Mark Twain, On Masturbation

“the size of a misfortune is not determinable by an outsider’s measurement of it but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it.”

“The small mound I have mentioned a while ago was once occupied by the Phenician city of Laish. A party of filibusters from Zorah and Eschol captured the place, and lived there in a free and easy way, worshiping gods of their own manufacture and stealing idols from their neighbors whenever they wore their own out. Jeroboam set up a golden calf here to fascinate his people and keep them from making dangerous trips to Jerusalem to worship, which might result in a return to their rightful allegiance. With all respect for those ancient Israelites, I can not overlook the fact that they were not always virtuous enough to withstand the seductions of a golden calf. Human nature has not changed much since then.” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive … but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.”

“The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.”

“The Southern heart is too impulsive; Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger.
– “The Spirit of Tennessee Journalism”― Mark Twain

“The startled girl dropped her watering-pot and clasped her hands together, and at that moment a stone cannon-ball crashed through her fair body.”― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc – Vol I

“The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“The stranger’s first feeling, when suddenly confronted by that towering and awful apparition wrapped in its shroud of snow, is breath-taking astonishment. It is as if heaven’s gates had swung open and exposed the throne. (Twain on seeing the Jungfrau.)”― Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

“The street called Straight is straighter than a corkscrew, but not as straight as a rainbow. St. Luke is careful not to commit himself; he does not say it is the street which is straight, but the “street which is called Straight.” It is a fine piece of irony; it is the only facetious remark in the Bible, I believe.” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“the sun was up so high when i waked, that i judged it was after eight o’clock. i laid there in the grass and the cool shade, thinking about things and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. i could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. there was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. a couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.”

“The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not.”

“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.”

“The time to being 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.”

“The timid man yearns for full value and asks for a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator and Anti-Imperialist Essays

“The tomb of Adam! How touching it was, here in a land of strangers, far away from home, and friends, and all who cared for me, thus to discover the grave of a blood relation.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.”

“The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.”

“The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.”

“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so. ”

“The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world’d luxuries, king by grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented.”― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“The truth is, a person’s memory has no more sense that his conscience, and no appreciation whatever of values and proportions.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“The truth should never be permitted to stand in the way of a good story.”

“The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born an the day you find out why.”

“The two testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The old one gives us a picture of these people’s deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward.” ― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson and Other Tales

“the very next morning at daylight such parties are sure to be found lying up some back alley, contentedly waiting for the hearse.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“The Vesuvius of today is a very poor affair compared to the mighty volcano of Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands, but I am glad I visited it. It was well worth it.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the site of the present city of that name, where they found a ‘religious and political despotism, a privileged class descended from the sun, a temple and a sacred fire.’ It must have been like getting home again; it was home with an advantage, in fact, for it lacked Louis XIV.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes,”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.”― Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

“the Welshman allowed it to eat into the vitals of his visitors,”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean and try to make them dry and warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken coop; but the kindest-hearted white man can always be depended on to prove himself inadequate when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the situation around and imagine how he would like it to have a well-meaning savage transfer him from his house and his church and his clothes and his books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and snow, and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no bed, no covering for his and his family’s naked bodies, and nothing to eat but snakes and grubs and offal. This would be a hell to him; and if he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to the savage – but he hasn’t any, and has never had any; and for lack of it he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw those poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter with them.”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“The window went up, a maid-servant’s discordant voice profaned the holy calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr’s remains!”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others’ advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling.”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“The word Palestine always brought to my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States. I do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it was because I could not conceive of a small country having so large a history.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“The world is beautiful and dangerous, and joyful and sad, and ungrateful and giving, and full of so, so many things. The world is new and it is old. It is big and it is small. The world is fierce and it is kind, and we, every one of us, are in it.”― Mark Twain & Philip Stead

“The world is beautiful and dangerous, and joyful and said, and ungrateful and giving, and full of so, so many things. The world is new and it is old. It is big and it is small. The world is fierce and it is kind, and we, every one us, are in it.”

“The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy.”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.”

“The writing begins when you’ve finished. Only then do you know what you’re trying to say.” ― Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

“The young are the only ones with enough experience to judge my work.”

“their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient.” Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth’s political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor.” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Their garment? Have they but one?”
“Ah, good your Worship, what would they do with more? Truly they have not two bodies each.”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“Their very imagination was dead. When you can say that of a man he has struck bottom… there is no lower deep for him.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of sleep – but an intruder came, now, that would not “down”. It was conscience. They began to feel a vague fear that they had been doing wrong to run away; and next they thought of the stolen meat, and then the real torture came […] So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing. Then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously inconsistent pirates fell peacefully to sleep.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway that led to the back rooms on the second floor. Clods were handy and the air was full of them in a twinkling. They raged around Sid like a hail-storm; and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect, and Tom was over the fence and gone. There was a gate, but as a general thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. His soul was at peace, now that he had settled with Sid for calling attention to his black thread and getting him into trouble.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that’s got sand in it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Then she told me all about the bad place, and said I wished I was there. She got mad, then, but I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres, all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Then the cow asked:

“Then the old man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn’t skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t know the names of, and so called them what’s-his-name, when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Then there is the tamarind. I thought tamarinds were made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, and it seemed to me that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my lips, till they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours. They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave them a “wire edge” that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said no, it will come off when the enamel does” – which was comforting, at any rate. I found, afterward, that only strangers eat tamarinds – but they only eat them once.”― Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands: Hawaii in the 1860s

“Then, having thus made the Creator responsible for all those pains and diseases and miseries above enumerated, and which he could have prevented, the gifted Christian blandly calls him Our Father!
It is as I tell you. He equips the Creator with every trait that goes to the making of a fiend, and then arrives at the conclusion that a fiend and a father are the same thing! Yet he would deny that a malevolent lunatic and a Sunday school superintendent are essentially the same.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, along a raised shell road, with a canal on one hand and a dense wood on the other; and here and there, in the distance, a ragged and angular-limbed and moss-bearded cypress, top standing out, clear cut against the sky, and as quaint of form as the apple-trees in Japanese pictures—such was our course and the surroundings of it.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“There ain’t anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about. — Huck Finn”― Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad

“there ain’t no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can’t stay so, you soon get over it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“There ain’t no harm in a hound, nohow.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”

“There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them. Such sentiments—for the half-credences of which I speak have never the full force of thought—such sentiments are seldom thoroughly stifled unless by reference to the doctrine of chance, or, as it is technically termed, the Calculus of Probabilities. Now this Calculus is, in its essence, purely mathematical; and thus we have the anomaly of the most rigidly exact in science applied to the shadow and spirituality of the most intangible in speculation.” ― Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die, Vol.1

“There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.”

“There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.—[See”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator

“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“There are men who cannot hear animals,” he said. “And then there are men who cannot hear anything at all.”― Mark Twain, The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine

“There are more chickens than a man can know in this world, but an unprovoked kindness is the rarest of birds.”― Mark Twain, The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine

“There are not books enough on earth to contain the record of the prophecies Indians and other unauthorized parties have made; but one may carry in his overcoat pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been fulfilled.”― Mark Twain

“There are not enough morally brave men in stock. We are out of moral-courage material; we are in a condition of profound poverty.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.”

“There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.”

“There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.”

“There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn’t because the book is not there and worth being written — it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.”

“There are some few people I respect and admire, but I don’t think much of the species.”

“There are ten parts of speech and they are all troublesome.”― Mark Twain, The Awful German Language / Die schreckliche deutsche Sprache

“There are things which some people never attempt during their whole lives, but one of these is not poetry. Poetry attacks all human beings sooner or later, and, like the measles, is mild or violent according to the age of the sufferer.”

“There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life–life’s “experiences”–are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never knew one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and
shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said ‘Faith is believing what you
know ain’t so’.”― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a
rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2,
to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the
manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2
admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.”― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1–to tell him you have read one of his books; 2–to tell him you have read all of his books; 3–to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer them, or turn them into literature.”

“There are times when I would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.”

“There are two kinds of patriotism — monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: “The King can do no wrong.” We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: “Our country, right or wrong!” We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had:– the individual’s right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.”

“There are two kinds of speakers. Those who are nervous and those who are liars.”

“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can.”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can.”

“There are two types of people. People who have accomplished things and people who have claimed to accomplish things. The first group is less crowded.”

“There are wealthy gentlemen in En-gland who drive four-horse passenger coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line in the summer because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work, and then they would resign.”

“There are,” said Twain, “certain sweet-smelling, sugarcoated lies current in the world which all politic men have apparently tacitly conspired together to support and perpetuate… We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express, and another one — the one we use — which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy.”

“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.”

“There has been much tragedy in my life; at least half of it actually happened.”

“There has never been a just [war], never an honorable one–on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful–as usual–will shout for the war. The pulpit will–warily and cautiously–object–at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, ‘It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.’ Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers–as earlier–but do not dare say so. And now the whole nation–pulpit and all–will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Fenimore Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now.”― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses

“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.”

“There is a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in. But of course this was at rare intervals. Ferryboats used to lose valuable trips because their passengers grew old and died, waiting for us to get by.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain: The Novels,

“There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“there is a sort of pathos about it when one remembers how few are your days, how childish your pomps, and what shadows you are!”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.”― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.”

“There is no easy or quick plan to happiness, there is no single spot where you can start. Where you are right now is the best place to begin.”

“There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a Dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And You are but a Thought — a vagrant Thought, a useless Thought, a homeless Thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities.”

“There is no prophecy in our day but history. But history is a trustworthy prophet. History is always repeating itself, because conditions are always repeating themselves. Out of duplicated conditions history always gets a duplicate product.”― Mark Twain, The Works of Mark Twain, Complete and Unabridged

“There is no regular system of taxation, but when the Emperor or the Bashaw want money, they levy on some rich man, and he has to furnish the cash or go to prison. Therefore, few men in Morocco dare to be rich.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.”

“There is no such thing as “the Queen’s English.” The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”― Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

“There is no such thing as an ordinary life.”

“There is no such thing as material covetousness. All covetousness is spiritual. …Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.”― Mark Twain, What Is Man?

“There is no such thing as the Queen’s English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!”

“There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle afer cycle, by force and bloodshed.”

“There is not one man in seventy-five hundred that can tell what a pictured face is intended to express. There is not one man in five hundred that can go into a court-room and be sure that he will not mistake some harmless innocent of a juryman for the black-hearted assassin on trial. Yet such people talk of “character” and presume to interpret “expression” in pictures.” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.”― Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Short Works

“There is nothing in the world like persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain

“There is nothing so annoying as having two people talking when you’re busy interrupting.”

“There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is — in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree — it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime — the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.”

“There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory. The invention of hell measured by our Christianity of today, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the deity nor his son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled.”

“There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“There isn’t a parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the equator if it had had its rights.”

“There isn’t anything you can’t stand, if you are only born and bred to it.” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“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.”

“There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It’s dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.”

“There spoke the race!” he said; “always ready to claim what it hasn’t got, and mistake its ounce of brass filings for a ton of gold-dust. You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things–broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision. Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them–and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon–laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution– these can lift at a colossal humbug–push it a little–weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“There warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“There was a freshness and breeziness, too, and an exhilarating sense of emancipation from all sorts of cares and responsibilities, that almost made us feel that the years we had spent in the close, hot city, toiling and slaving, had been wasted and thrown away.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says: “Who dah?” He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“There was a secret somewhere, but madness was not the key to it.”― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Vol 1

“There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where the ladder was. It was the king descending. I could see that he was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the other. He came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a slender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious; she was dying of smallpox. Here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility, its utmost summit; this was challenging death in the open field unarmed, with all the odds against the challenger, no reward set upon the contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold to gaze and applaud; and yet the king’s bearing was as serenely brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where knight meets knight in equal fight and clothed in protecting steel. He was great now; sublimely great. The rude statues of his ancestors in his palace should have an addition—I would see to that; and it would not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon, like the rest, it would be a king in commoner’s garb bearing death in his arms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child and be comforted.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“There was a tolerably fair sprinkling of young folks, and another fair sprinkling of gentlemen and ladies who were non-committal as to age, being neither actually old or absolutely young.” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad – Mark Twain [Modern library classics]

“There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.”

“there was no crime in unconscious plagiarism; that I committed it everyday, that he committed it everyday, that every man alive on earth who writes or speaks commits it every day and not merely once or twice but every time he open his mouth… there is nothing of our own in it except some slight change born of our temperament, character, environment, teachings and associations”

“There was no Pacific railroad in those fine times of ten or twelve years ago—not a single rail of it. I only proposed to stay in Nevada three months—I had no thought of staying longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and strange, and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would not see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven uncommonly long years!”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“There was not a man in the party but believed that with a little practice he could stand in a row, especially if there were others along;”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“There was probably not a knight of all the Round Table combination who would not rather have died than been caught carrying such a thing as that on his flagstaff.  And yet there could not be anything more sensible.  It had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sandwiches into my helmet, but I was interrupted in the act, and had to make an excuse and lay them aside, and a dog got them.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“There was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before—blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said “Shall I Never See Thee More Alas.” Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said “I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas.” There was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said “And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas.” These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn’t somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the fan-tods. Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“There would be a center table, with books of a tranquil sort on it. . .”― Mark Twain Following the Equator

“There’s a good spot tucked away somewhere in everybody. You’ll be a long time finding it sometimes.” ― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“There’s no such thing as an uninteresting life, such a thing is an impossibility. Beneath the dullest exterior, there is a drama, a comedy, a tragedy.”

“There’s one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he’s crooked.”

“There’s only one way to be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it just like A B C.’ That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was never loaded with anything but blank cartridges.” ― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“These are sad days in literature. Homer is dead. Shakespeare is dead. And I myself am not feeling at all well.”

“These coins are not very valuable. Jack went out to get a napoleon changed, so as to have money suited to the general cheapness of things, and came back and said he had “swamped the bank, had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head of the firm had gone on the street to negotiate for the balance of the change.” I bought nearly half a pint of their money for a shilling myself. I am not proud on account of having so much money, though. I care nothing for wealth.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“These descriptions do really state the truth- as nearly as the limitations of language will allow. But language is a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle, and it can seldom arrange descriptive words in such a way that they will not inflate the facts-by help of the readers imagination, which is always ready to take a hand, and work for nothing, and do the bulk of it at that.”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“These Sultans of the fastnesses were turbaned with tumbled volumes of cloud, which shredded away from time to time and drifted off fringed and torn, trailing their continents of shadow after them;” ― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“They are common defects of my own, and one mustn’t criticise other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the ground. These vaults have a resemblance to houses—sometimes to temples; are built of marble, generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; they face the walks and driveways of the cemetery; and when one moves through the midst of a thousand or so of them and sees their white roofs and gables stretching into the distance on every hand, the phrase ‘city of the dead’ has all at once a meaning to him.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“They did not know it was impossible so they did it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“They did not know it was impossible so they did it”

“They did not know it was impossible, so they did it.”

“They did not know that the quicker a fresh-water fish is on the fire after he is caught the better he is;”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“They forget to mention that he is the slowest mover in the universe; that his Eye that never sleeps, might as well, since it takes it a century to see what any other eye would see in a week; that in all history there is not an instance where he thought of a noble deed first, but always thought of it just a little after somebody else had thought of it and done it. He arrives then, and annexes the dividend.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said: “Now the cussed thing’s ready, Sawbones, and you’ll just out with another five, or here she stays.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Tom Sawyer

“They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness.  Yes, here was a curious revelation, indeed, of the depth to which this people had been sunk in slavery.  Their entire being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation, dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in this life.  Their very imagination was dead.  When you can say that of a man, he has struck bottom, I reckon; there is no lower deep for him.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“They had just docked in Greece and the passengers learned they would be quarantined and not be allowed to go ashore…
“It was the bitterest disappointment we had yet experienced. To lie a whole day in sight of the Acropolis, and yet be obliged to go away without visiting Athens! Disappointment was hardly a strong enough word to describe the circumstances….At eleven o’clock at night, when most of the ship’s company were abed, four of us stole softly ashore in a small boat, a clouded moon favoring the enterprise…Once ashore and seeing no road, we took a tall hill to the left of the distant Acropolis for a mark, and steered straight for it over all obstructions…The full moon was riding high in the cloudless heavens now. We sauntered carelessly and unthinkingly to the edge of the lofty battlements of the citadel, and looked down—- a vision! And such a vision! Athens by moonlight!” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad: Or, the New Pilgrim’s Progress, Volume 2

“They have a grand mausoleum in Florence, which they built to bury our Lord and Saviour and the Medici family in.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“They know, too, that while in history-building a fact is better than a presumption, it doesn’t take a presumption long to bloom into a fact when THEY have the handling of it.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“They mourned for his kind of Christianity, and he frankly scoffed at theirs; but both parties went on loving each other just the same.”

“They read those playful trifles in the solidest terms, and decided without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that Dave Wilson was a pudd’nhead — which there hadn’t — this revelation removed that doubt for good and all.”― Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.” ― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences

“They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“They say I work for the angels they never said I was one”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“They swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the prostitution got up and begun.”

“They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited, and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the trestle, and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went his way as silently as he had come. HE KNOWS.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“They was strong words but they was said and I let them stay said.”

“They were nothing but ravens—I knew that—what they thought of me could be a matter of no consequence—and yet when even a raven shouts after you, “What a hat!” “Oh, pull down your vest!” and that sort of thing, it hurts you and humiliates you, and there is no getting around it with fine reasoning and pretty arguments. Animals”― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad – Volume 01

“think you are wrong in saying we ought to follow the methods of Sherlock Holmes. We ought rather to follow Dupin, Poe’s detective, the man who preceded Sherlock Holmes.”― Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die, Vol.1

“This ain’t no thirty-seven year job, this is a thirty-eight year job, Tom Sawyer.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and it’s object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“This creature’s career could produce but one result, and it speedily followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister’s son became an engineer. The doctor’s and the post-master’s sons became ‘mud clerks;’ the wholesale liquor dealer’s son became a barkeeper on a boat; four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge, became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary—from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. Two months of his wages would pay a preacher’s salary for a year. Now some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river—at least our parents would not let us.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“this dreadful matter brought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage against these oppressors.  They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness.” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“This explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.”

“This is Huck Finn, a child of mine of shady reputation. Be good to him for his parent’s sake.”― Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

“This is indeed India!
“…. The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of traditions, whose yesterday’s bear date with the modering antiquities for the rest of nations-the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the world combined.” ― Mark Twain

“this is the only ship going east this time of the year, but there’s a thousand coming west—what’s a fair wind for us is a head wind to them—the Almighty’s blowing a fair wind for a thousand vessels, and this tribe wants him to turn it clear around so as to accommodate one—and she a steamship at that! It ain’t good sense, it ain’t good reason, it ain’t good Christianity, it ain’t common human charity.”― Mark Twain, Mark Twain: The Complete Works[Classics Authors Vol: 1]

“This nation is like all the others that have been spewed upon the earth–ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there! – Letter to J. H. Twichell, 1/29/1901”― Mark Twain

“Those who don’t read good books have no advantage over those who can’t.”

“Thou shalt not commit adultry is a command which makes no distinction between the following persons. They are all required to obey it: children at birth. Children in the cradle. School children. Youths and maidens. Fresh adults. Older ones. Men and women of 40. Of 50. Of 60. Of 70. Of 80. Of 100. The command does not distribute its burden equally, and cannot. It is not hard upon the three sets of children.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

“Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.”

“Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered — either by themselves or by others. But for the Civil War, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman and Sheridan would not have been discovered, nor have risen into notice.”

“thread, but it’s black.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It : Premium Edition -Illustrated

“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.”

“tints were charged with a leaden tinge from the solid cloud-bank overhead. The river was leaden; all distances the same; and even the far-reaching ranks of combing white-caps were dully shaded by the dark, rich atmosphere through which their swarming legions marched. The thunder-peals were constant and deafening; explosion followed explosion with but inconsequential intervals between, and the reports grew steadily sharper and higher-keyed, and more trying to the ear; the lightning was as diligent as the thunder, and produced effects which enchanted the eye and sent electric ecstasies of mixed delight and apprehension shivering along every nerve in the body in unintermittent procession.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

“To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a Negro. She was a slave, and salable as such.”― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, “Our Country, right or wrong,” and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?”

“To be good is noble. To tell other people how to be good is even nobler and much less trouble”

“To be great, truly great, you have to be the kind of person who makes the others around you great.”― Mark Twain

“To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
That makes calamity of so long life;”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.”― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I’ve done it a thousand times.”

“To dash a half-truth in the world’s eyes is the surest way of blinding it altogether.”― Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 2

“To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.”

“To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.”

“To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself…Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”

“To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.”

“to make a pledge of any kind is to declare war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator:

“To me [Edgar Allan Poe’s] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin’s [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane’s. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.”

“To place man properly at the present time, he stands somewhere between the angels and the French.”

“To proceed with the Biblical curiosities. Naturally you will think the threat to punish Adam and Eve for disobeying was of course not carried out, since they did not create themselves, nor their natures nor their impulses nor their weaknesses, and hence were not properly subject to anyone’s commands and not responsible to anybody for their acts.It will surprise you to know that the threat was carried out. Adam and Eve were punished and that crime finds apologists unto this day.The sentence of death was executed.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“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.”

“To succeed in life you need two things: Ignorance and confidence”

“To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.”

“To the one, nights spent in dancing had seemed made of minutes instead of hours; to the other, those selfsame nights had been like all other nights of dungeon life and seemed made of slow, dragging weeks instead of hours and minutes.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“To the rear, sir—he’s lost his leg!”― Mark Twain, How to Tell a Story and Other Essays

“To this end it furnishes them an abundance of Catholic priests to teach them to be docile and obedient, and to be diligent in acquiring ignorance about things here below, and knowledge about the kingdom of heaven,”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“To us, our house was not unsentient matter — it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction.”

“To wit, that this dreadful matter brought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage against these oppressors.  They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness.  Yes, here was a curious revelation, indeed, of the depth to which this people had been sunk in slavery.  Their entire being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation, dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in this life.  Their very imagination was dead.  When you can say that of a man, he has struck bottom, I reckon; there is no lower deep for him.”― Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“today i will find strength in my weakness”

“Today the same thing over. I’ve got it up the tree again.”― Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve and Other Stories

“Tolstoy carelessly neglects to include a boat race.”― Mark Twain on War and Peace

“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, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom did play hookey, and” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit pon that of professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting-room floor with it.
One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt’s yellow cat came along, purring, eying the teaspoon avariciously, and begging for a taste. Tom said:
“Don’t ask for it unless you want it, Peter.”
But Peter signified that he did want it.
“You better make sure.”
Peter was sure.
“Now you’ve asked for it, and I’ll give it to you, because there ain’t anything mean about me; but if you find you don’t like it, you mustn’t blame anybody but your own self.”
Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom found himself writing “BECKY” in the sand with his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Part 1.

“Tom, I am not everybody.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said: “Is it genuwyne?” Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy. “Well, all right,” said Huckleberry, “it’s a trade.” Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the pinchbug’s prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Tom Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was the proudest moment of his life.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom was General of one of these armies, Joe Harper (a bosom friend) General of the other. These two great commanders did not condescend to fight in person—that being better suited to the still smaller fry—but sat together on an eminence and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through aides-de-camp.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance. Huckleberry”― Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Collection – All Four Books [Free Audiobooks Includes ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer,’ ‘Huckleberry Finn’+ 2 more sequels]

“TOM!” No answer. “TOM!” No answer. “What’s gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!” No answer. The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for “style,” not service—she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well.”― Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Collection

“‎TOM!”
No answer.
“TOM!”
No answer.
“What’s gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!”
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for “style,” not service– she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom!” No answer. “Tom!”― Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Collection

“Tom’s army won a great victory, after a long and hard-fought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged, the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Tom’s whole being applauded this idea. It was deep, and dark, and awful; the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping with it.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.”

“Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.”

“Tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other on me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice!”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”

“Training- training is everything; training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Travel is fatal to narrowmindedness, prejudice and bigotry.”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad,”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad / Roughing It

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”― Mark Twain, Mark Twain: The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice,bigotry and narrow-mindedness.”

“True love is the only heart disease that is best left to “run on”–the only affection of the heart for which there is no help, and none desired.”

“Truly, “seeing is believing” – and many a man lives a long life through, thinking he believes certain universally received and well established things, and yet never suspects that if he were confronted by those things once, he would discover that he did not really believe them before, but only thought he believed them.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” ― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“Truth is stranger than fiction…”

“Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and today — all without seeing him. It is a long time to be alone; still, it is better to be alone that unwelcome. I had to have company — I was made for it, I think — so I made friends with the animals.”― Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

“Tweedle dee and tweedle dum”― Twain Mark Twain, Burlesque Autobiography and Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

“Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian—not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“Two things which are the peculiar domain of the heart, not the mind—politics and religion. He doesn’t want to know the other side. He wants arguments and statistics for his own side, and nothing more.”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.”

“Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” [Mark Twain, a Biography]”― Mark Twain

“Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”― Mark Twain

“Under our infamous laws the seducer is not punished, and is not even disgraced, but his victim and all her family and kindred are smirched with a stain which is permanent—a stain which the years cannot remove, nor even modify. Our laws break the hearts and ruin the lives of the victim and of her people, and let the seducer go free. I am not of a harsh nature—I am the reverse of that—and yet if I could have my way the seducer should be flayed alive in the middle of the public plaza, with all the world to look on.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

“Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government, and earthly despotism would be the absolute perfect earthly government if the conditions were the same; namely the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual; but as a perishable, perfect man must die and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands.  The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government.  An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual.  But as a perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a datable fact which considerably mellows and modifies the shiny newness of our country, and gives her a most respectable outside-aspect of rustiness and antiquity.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Use the right word, not its second cousin.”

“Use what you stand for and what you oppose as a foundation to write great content that resonates with readers and creates a ripple effect.”

“Virtue never has been as respectable as money.”

“Warm summer sun,
shine brightly here,
Warm Southern wind,
blow softly here,
Green sod above,
lie light, lie light,
Good night, dear heart;
good night, good night.”― Mark Twain

“way. And there ain’t no OTHER way, that ever I heard of, and I’ve read all the books that gives any information about these things.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“We ain’t dead — we are only off being pirates.”

“We all know about Father Damien, the French priest who voluntarily forsook the world and went to the leper island of Molokai to labor among its population of sorrowful exiles who wait there, in slow-consuming misery, for death to come and release them from their troubles;”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator

“We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.”

“We always prized him, but never so much as now, when we are going to lose him.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“We are all alike on the inside.”

“We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.”

“We are so strangely made; the memories that could make us happy pass away; it is the memories that break our hearts that abide.”― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“We are strange beings, we seem to go free, but we go in chains — chains of training, custom, convention, association, environment — in a word, Circumstance — and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain.”

“WE ARE THE CANAANITES. WE ARE THEY THAT HAVE BEEN DRIVEN OUT OF THE LAND OF CANAAN BY THE JEWISH ROBBER, JOSHUA.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“We are waenkkd , hj”

“We can’t reach old age by another man’s road. My habits protect my life but they would assassinate you.”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“We can’t all be heros because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.”

“We catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed, only a kind of low chuckle. We had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“we consulted the guide-books and were rejoiced to know that there were no sights in Odessa to see; and so we had one good, untrammeled holyday on our hands, with nothing to do but idle about the city and enjoy ourselves.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.”

“We did not oversleep at St. Nicholas. The church-bell began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from the length of time it continued to ring I judged that it takes the Swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation through his head. ”― Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

“We do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we are apt to dissipate to excess. We never cared any thing about ice-cream at home, but we look upon it with a sort of idolatry now that it is so scarce in these red-hot climates of the East.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“We don not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when the glare, and the the noise, and the confusion are gone, and in fancy we revisit alone, the solemn monuments of the past, and summon the phantom pageants of an age that has passed away.”

“we felt very complacent and conceited, and better satisfied with life after we had added it to our list of things which we had seen and some other people had not.” ― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“We had a little slave boy whom we had hired from some one, there in Hannibal. He was from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and had been brought away from his family and his friends, half way across the American continent, and sold. He was a cheery spirit, innocent and gentle, and the noisiest creature that ever was, perhaps. All day long he was singing, whistling, yelling, whooping, laughing – it was maddening, devastating, unendurable. At last, one day, I lost all my temper, and went raging to my mother, and said Sandy had been singing for an hour without a single break, and I couldn’t stand it, and wouldn’t she please shut him up.
The tears came into her eyes, and her lip trembled, and she said something like this – ‘Poor thing, when he sings, it shows that he is not remembering, and that comforts me; but when he is still, I am afraid he is thinking, and I cannot bear it. He will never see his mother again; if he can sing, I must not hinder it, but be thankful for it. If you were older, you would understand me; then that friendless child’s noise would make you glad.’ It was a simple speech, and made up of small words, but it went home, and Sandy’s noise was not a trouble to me any more.”― Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“We had a notion to get out and join the sixty soldiers, but upon reflecting that there were four hundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on and join the Indians.”

“We had a strong desire to make a trip up the Yazoo and the Sunflower—an interesting region at any time, but additionally interesting at this time, because up there the great inundation was still to be seen in force—but we were nearly sure to have to wait a day or more for a New Orleans boat on our return; so we were obliged to give up the project.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“We had a succession of black nights, going up the river, and it was observable that whenever we landed, and suddenly inundated the trees with the intense sunburst of the electric light, a certain curious effect was always produced: hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from the masses of shining green foliage, and went careering hither and thither through the white rays, and often a song-bird tuned up and fell to singing.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“We had heard a world of talk about the marvellous beauty of Lake Tahoe, and finally curiosity drove us thither to see it.” ― Mark Twain, Roughing It : Premium Edition -Illustrated

“We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened – Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn’t say nothing against it, because I’ve seen a frog lay most as many, so of course It could be done.”

“We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it’s efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read-”― Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, jane austen, CHARLES DICKENS, Victor Hugo, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground – for we have all been babies.”

“We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.”

“We have reached a little altitude where we may look down upon the Indian Thugs with a complacent shudder; and we may even hope for a day, many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us in the same way.”― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“We have to keep our God placated with prayers, and even then we are never sure of him–how much higher and finer is the Indian’s God……Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact; the Great Spirit is not all-powerful, but does the very best he can for his injun and does it free of charge.”

“We made many trips to the lake after that, and had many a hair-breadth escape and blood-curdling adventure which will never be recorded in any history. Chapter” ― Mark Twain, Roughing It : Premium Edition -Illustrated

“We made many trips to the lake after that, and had many a hairbreadth escape and bloodcurdling adventure which will never be recorded in any history.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain

“We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.”

“We met a great many other interesting people, among them Lewis Carroll, author of the immortal “Alice”–but he was only interesting to look at, for he was the silliest and shyest full-grown man I have ever met except “Uncle Remus.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition

“We must have a religion — it goes without saying — but my idea is, to have it cut up into forty free sects, so that they will police each other, as had been the case in the United States in my time. Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition. That wasn’t law; it wasn’t gospel: it was only an opinion — my opinion, and I was only a man, one man: so it wasn’t worth any more than the pope’s — or any less, for that matter.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“We must take things as we find them in this world.”

“We never read the full explanatory surroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion to suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling particulars and be happy.”

“We ordered him peremptorily to sit down with us.” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad – Complete Version

“We recognize that there are no trivial occurrences in life if we get the right focus on them.”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition

“We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”

“We saw also an autograph letter of Lucrezia Borgia, a lady for whom I have always entertained the highest respect, on account of her rare histrionic capabilities, her opulence in solid gold goblets made of gilded wood, her high distinction as an operatic screamer, and the facility with which she could order a sextuple funeral and get the corpses ready for it.”

“We saw no bugs or reptiles to speak of, and so I was thinking of saying in print, in a general way, that there were none at all; but one night after I had gone to bed, the Reverend came into my room carrying something, and asked, “Is this your boot?” I said it was, and he said he had met a spider going off with it. Next morning he stated that just at dawn the same spider raised his window and was coming in to get a shirt, but saw him and fled. I inquired, “Did he get the shirt?” “No.” “How did you know it was a shirt he was after?” “I could see it in his eye.”― Mark Twain, Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion

“We saw rude piles of stones standing near the roadside, at intervals, and recognized the custom of marking boundaries which obtained in Jacob’s time. There were no walls, no fences, no hedges—nothing to secure a man’s possessions but these random heaps of stones. The Israelites held them sacred in the old patriarchal times, and these other Arabs, their lineal descendants, do so likewise. An American, of ordinary intelligence, would soon widely extend his property, at an outlay of mere manual labor, performed at night, under so loose a system of fencing as this.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“We shall remember …… Damascus, the “Pearl of the East”, the pride of Syria, the fabled garden of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian Nights,the oldest metropolis on Earth, the one city in all the world that has kept its name and held its place and looked serenely on while the Kingdoms and Empires of four thousand years have risen to life, enjoyed their little season of pride and pomp, and then vanished and been forgotten”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.”

“we slept, if one might call such a condition by so strong a name—for it was a sleep set with a hair-trigger.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“We used to trust in God. I think it was in 1863 that some genius suggested that it be put upon the gold and silver coins which circulated among the rich. They didn’t put it on the nickels and coppers because they didn’t think the poor folks had any trust in God.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“We went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the children and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and I saw he was going to plant the puppy, and I was glad, because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair, and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home; so I tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have two, or it is no use. When the footman had finished and covered little Robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he said: “Poor little doggie, you saved HIS child!”― Mark Twain, A Dog’s Tale

“We were on the north shore. There, the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray, sometimes white. This gives the marvelous transparency of the water a fuller advantage than it has elsewhere on the lake. We usually pushed out a hundred yards or so from shore, and then lay down on the thwarts, in the sun, and let the boat drift by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked. It”― Mark Twain, Roughing It : Premium Edition -Illustrated

“We were perfectly willing to go in there and rest, but it could not be done. It was only another delusion—a painting by some ingenious artist with little charity in his heart for tired folk.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can “show off” and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can’t shake off.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can “show off” and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can’t shake off. All our passengers are paying strict attention to this thing, with the end in view which I have mentioned. The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“We wished to go to the Ambrosian Library, and we did that also. We saw a manuscript of Virgil, with annotations in the handwriting of Petrarch, the gentleman who loved another man’s Laura, and lavished upon her all through life a love which was a clear waste of the raw material. It was sound sentiment, but bad judgment. It brought both parties fame, and created a fountain of commiseration for them in sentimental breasts that is running yet. But who says a word in behalf of poor Mr. Laura? (I do not know his other name.) Who glorifies him? Who bedews him with tears? Who writes poetry about him? Nobody. How do you suppose he liked the state of things that has given the world so much pleasure? How did he enjoy having another man following his wife every where and making her name a familiar word in every garlic-exterminating mouth in Italy with his sonnets to her pre-empted eyebrows? They got fame and sympathy–he got neither. This is a peculiarly felicitous instance of what is called poetical justice. It is all very fine; but it does not chime with my notions of right. It is too one-sided–too ungenerous.” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Well I ’low I’ll MAKE it my business.” “Well why don’t you?” “If you say much, I will.” “Much—much—MUCH. There now.” “Oh, you think you’re mighty smart, DON’T you? I could lick you with one hand tied behind me, if I wanted to.” “Well why don’t you DO it? You SAY you can do it.” “Well I WILL, if you fool with me.” “Oh yes—I’ve seen whole families in the same fix.” “Smarty! You think you’re SOME, now, DON’T you? Oh, what a hat!”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn’t let on.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Well, everybody does it that way, Huck.”

“Well, go ‘long and play; but mind you get back some time in a week, or I’ll tan you.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Well, I don’t quite know about that, sir. I’ve often thought I would like to see a ghost if I—” “Would you?” exclaimed the young lady. “We’ve got one! Would you try that one? Will you?”― Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“Well, I know. It’s jam—that’s what it is. Forty times I’ve said if you didn’t let that jam alone I’d skin you. Hand me that switch.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Well, I lay if I get hold of you I’ll —”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Well, I will tell you, and you must understand if you can. You belong to a singular race. Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness- machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department the other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain–maybe a dozen. In most cases the man’s life is about equally divided between happiness and unhappiness. When this is not the case the unhappiness predominates–always; never the other. Sometimes a man’s make and disposition are such that his misery- machine is able to do nearly all the business. Such a man goes through life almost ignorant of what happiness is. Everything he touches, everything he does, brings a misfortune upon him. You have seen such people? To that kind of a person life is not an advantage, is it? It is only a disaster. Sometimes for an hour’s happiness a man’s machinery makes him pay years of misery. Don’t you know that? It happens every now and then.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up of a vast array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her citizens to accomplish it. She is today one vast museum of magnificence and misery. All the churches in an ordinary American city put together could hardly buy the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathedrals. And for every beggar in America, Italy can show a hundred – and rags and vermin to match. It is the wretchedest, princeliest land on earth.
Look at the grande Doumo of Florence – a vast pile that has been sapping the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly finished yet. Like all other men,
I fell down and worshiped it, but when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking, too suggestive, and I said. “Oh, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don’t you rob your church?”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Well, it rained mortar and masonry the rest of the week.  This was the report; but probably the facts would have modified it.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round— more than a body could tell what to do with.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Well, let her—she should see that he could be as indifferent as some other people.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Well, mamma, the Indians believed they knew, but now we know they were wrong. By and by it can turn out that we are wrong. So now I only pray that there might be a God and a heaven – or something better.”― Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“Well, now, if I didn’t think you sewed his collar with white thread, but it’s black.” “Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!” But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said: “Siddy, I’ll lick you for that.” In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about them—one needle carried white thread and the other black. He said: “She’d never noticed if it hadn’t been for Sid. Confound it! sometimes she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to geeminy she’d stick to one or t’other—I can’t keep the run of ’em. But I bet you I’ll lam Sid for that. I’ll learn him!” He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though—and loathed him. Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time—just as men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it undisturbed. It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music—the reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet—no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer. The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him over everybody; and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He told them he was a pirate— been a pirate for thirty years out in the Indian Ocean—and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to goodness he’d been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him, “Don’t you thank me, don’t you give me no credit; it all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville camp-meeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!” And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody sings out, “Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!” Well, a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, “Let HIM pass the hat around!” Then everybody said it, the preacher too. So”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Well, the priest did very well, considering.  He got in all the details, and that is a good thing in a local item:  you see, he had kept books for the undertaker-department of his church when he was younger, and there, you know, the money’s in the details; the more details, the more swag:” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn’t answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.”― Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.”

“Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case, and so I dropped the matter. When you can’t cure a disaster by argument, what is the use to argue?”

“went off, without waiting for serving men, and unsaddled my horse, and washed such portions of his ribs and his spine as projected through his hide, and when I came back, behold five stately circus tents were up—tents that were brilliant, within, with blue, and gold, and crimson, and all manner of splendid adornment! I was speechless. Then they brought eight little iron bedsteads, and set them up in the tents; they put a soft mattress and pillows and good blankets and two snow-white sheets on each bed. Next, they rigged a table about the centre-pole, and on it placed pewter pitchers, basins, soap, and the whitest of towels—one set for each man; they pointed to pockets in the tent, and said we could put our small trifles in them for convenience, and if we needed pins or such things, they were sticking every where. Then came the finishing touch—they spread carpets on the floor! I simply said, “If you call this camping out, all right—but it isn’t the style I am used to; my little baggage that I brought along is at a discount.” It grew dark, and they put candles on the tables—candles set in bright, new, brazen candlesticks. And soon the bell—a genuine, simon-pure bell—rang, and we were invited to “the saloon.” I had thought before that we had a tent or so too many, but now here was one, at least, provided for; it was to be used for nothing but an eating-saloon. Like the others, it was high enough for a family of giraffes to live in, and was very handsome and clean and bright-colored within. It was a gem of a place. A table for eight, and eight canvas chairs; a table-cloth and napkins whose whiteness and whose fineness laughed to scorn the things we were used to in the great excursion steamer; knives and forks, soup-plates, dinner-plates—every thing, in the handsomest kind of style. It was wonderful! And they call this camping out. Those stately fellows in baggy trowsers and turbaned fezzes brought in a dinner which consisted of roast mutton, roast chicken, roast goose, potatoes, bread, tea, pudding, apples, and delicious grapes; the viands were better cooked than any we had eaten for weeks, and the table made a finer appearance, with its large German silver candlesticks and other finery, than any table we had sat down to for a good while, and yet that polite dragoman, Abraham, came bowing in and apologizing for the whole affair, on account of the unavoidable confusion of getting under way for a very long trip, and promising to do a great deal better in future! It is midnight, now, and we break camp at six in the morning. They call this camping out. At this rate it is a glorious privilege to be a pilgrim to the Holy Land.”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad – Mark Twain [Modern library classics]

“What a curious kind of fool a girl is. Never been licked in school. What’s a licking?”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“What a dim-witted slug the average human being is.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“…what a dull-witted slug the average human being is.” ― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges!” ― Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges! I” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“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. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words — 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written.”

“What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is lead in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, and every day, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, (which are but the mute articulation of his feelings,) not those other things are his history. His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of water-and they are so trifling a part of his bulk! a mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden-it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written.”― Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“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.”

“What an ass you are!” he said. “Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no happier than the sane.” ― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“What an ass you are!” Satan said. “Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is.” ― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“What are you giving me?” I said.  “Get along back to your circus, or I’ll report you.” Now what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards and then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with his nail-keg bent down nearly to his horse’s neck and his long spear pointed straight ahead.  I saw he meant business, so I was up the tree when he arrived.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“What can a person’s heart be made of that can pity a Christian’s child and yet can’t pity a devil’s child, that a thousand times more needs it!” ― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“What chance has the ignorant uncultivated liar against the educated expert?” ― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“What connection is there, President, between this uncanny creature and the disappearance of Lord Beltham, of which we were talking at dinner?”― Mark Twain, 50 Mystery and Detective Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die, Vol.1

“What dost thou know of suffering and oppression! I and my people know, but not thou.”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“What further does it tell us? This: that the assassin was left-handed. How do I know this? I should not be able to explain to you, gentlemen, how I know it, the signs being so subtle that only long experience and deep study can enable one to detect them. But the signs are here, and they are reinforced by a fact which you must have often noticed in the great detective narratives—that all assassins are left-handed.” “By”― Mark Twain, The Double-Barrelled Detective

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so”― Mark Twain

“What God lacks is convictions- stability of character. He ought to be a Presbyterian or a Catholic or something- not try to be everything.”

“What God wills, will happen; thou canst not hurry it, thou canst not alter it; therefore wait; and be patient”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“What got you into trouble?” says the baldhead to t’other chap.
“Well, I’d been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth—and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it—”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“What I suffered in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“What is a mirror?”

“what is joy without sorrow? what is success without failure? what is a win without a loss? what is health without illness? you have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. there is always going to be suffering. it’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.”

“What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.”

“What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it. . . . The work that is really a man’s own work is play and not work at all. . . . When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.”― Samuel Clemens

“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir…mighty scarce.”

“What would the new teacher, representing France, teach us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about railroading. Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in that matter. Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of Fulton’s date–1809. Postal service? No. France is a back number there. Telegraphy? No, we taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No. Magazining? No, that is our own specialty. Government? No; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Nobility, Democracy, Adultery the system is too variegated for our climate. Religion? No, not variegated enough for our climate. Morals? No, we cannot rob the poor to enrich ourselves.”― Mark Twain, Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches

“What you doin’ with this gun?”― Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“What, sir, would the people of the Earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.”

“What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce. “Woman—An Opinion” (speech) Some”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“What, warder, ho! the man that can blow so complacent a blast as that, probably blows it from a castle.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“What’s gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“What’s the name of the first point above New Orleans?’ I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.”

“What’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“When a man goes back to look at the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: There is no instance of such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination call for.”

“When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.”― Mark Twain, Who Is Mark Twain?

“When a man’s dog turns against him it is time for a wife to pack her trunk and go home to mama.”

“When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn’t say it.”

“When a prisoner of style escapes, it’s called an evasion.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“When all else fails, write what your heart tells you. You can’t depend on your eyes, when your imagination is out of focus.”

“When all else fails, write what your heart tells you. You can’t depend on your eyes, when your imagination are out of focus.”

“When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.”

“When did the r disappear from Southern speech, and how did it come to disappear? The custom of dropping it was not borrowed from the North, nor inherited from England.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.”― Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“When ever I get the urge to write, I lie down and it usually passes.”

“When he is sitting quiet, thinking about his sins, or is absent-minded or unapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears project above him conspicuously; but the breaking of a twig will scare him nearly to death, and then he tilts his ears back gently and starts for home. All you can see, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched out straight and “streaking it” through the low sage-brush, head erect, eyes right, and ears just canted a little to the rear, but showing you where the animal is, all the time, the same as if he carried a jib. Now and then he makes a marvelous spring with his long legs, high over the stunted sage-brush, and scores a leap that would make a horse envious. Presently he comes down to a long, graceful “lope,” and shortly he mysteriously disappears. He has crouched behind a sage-bush, and will sit there and listen and tremble until you get within six feet of him, when he will get under way again. But one must shoot at this creature once, if he wishes to see him throw his heart into his heels, and do the best he knows how. He is frightened clear through, now, and he lays his long ears down on his back, straightens himself out like a yard-stick every spring he makes, and scatters miles behind him with an easy indifference that is enchanting.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“When I am come to mine own again, I will always honor little children, remembering how that these trusted me and believed me in my time of trouble; whilst they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held me for a liar.”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“When I am come to mine own again, I will always honour little children, remembering how that these trusted me and believed in me in my time of trouble; whilst they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held me for a liar.”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart. I will keep this diligently in my remembrance, that this day’s lesson be not lost upon me, and my people suffer thereby; for learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.” ― Mark Twain, Mark Twain: The Complete Novels

“When I came to myself again, I said — ‘When I get so that I can do that, I’ll be able to raise the dead, and then I won’t have to pilot a steamboat to make a living. I want to retire from this business. I want a slush-bucket and a brush; I’m only fit for a roustabout. I haven’t got brains enough to be a pilot; and if I had I wouldn’t have strength enough to carry them around, unless I went on crutches.’ ‘Now drop that! When I say I’ll learn {footnote [‘Teach’ is not in the river vocabulary.]} a man the river, I mean it. And you can depend on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain

“When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny – the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs an flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody’s dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it’s spirits whispering – spirits that’s been dead ever so many years – and you always think they’re talking about you. ”

“When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who have gone on to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.”

“When I say I’ll learn {footnote [‘Teach’ is not in the river vocabulary.]} a man the river, I mean it. And you can depend on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.” ― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.”

“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.”

“When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.”― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.”

“When in doubt, tell the truth.”

“When its steamboat time
you steamboat”― Mark Twain

“When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.”

“When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop – that is, with a marriage; but when he writes about juveniles, he must stop where he best can.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.”

“When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.”

“When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always 20 years behind the times.”

“when the illumination did at last come, we felt repaid. It came unexpectedly, of course—things always do, that have been long looked and longed for. With a perfectly breath-taking suddenness several mast sheaves of varicolored rockets were vomited skyward out of the black throats of the Castle towers, accompanied by a thundering crash of sound, and instantly every detail of the prodigious ruin stood revealed against the mountainside and glowing with an almost intolerable splendor of fire and color. For some little time the whole building was a blinding”― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad – Volume 07

“When the Lord finished the world, he pronounced it good. That is what I said about my first work, too. But Time, I tell you, Time takes the confidence out of these incautious opinions. It is more than likely that He thinks about the world, now, pretty much as I think about the Innocents Abroad. The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.”

“When the spring morning dawned, the form still sat there, the elbows resting upon the table and the face upon the hands. All day long the figure sat there, the sunshine enriching its costly raiment and flashing from its jewels; twilight came, and presently the stars, but still the figure remained; the moon found it there still, and framed the picture with the shadow of the window sash, and flooded it with mellow light; by and by the darkness swallowed it up, and later the gray dawn revealed it again; the new day grew toward its prime, and still the forlorn presence was undisturbed.”― Mark Twain, Mark Twain: The Complete Novels

“When they came it was as if the lord of the world had arrived, and had brought all the glories of its kingdoms along; and when they went they left a calm behind which was like the deep sleep which follows an orgy.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“when we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it; we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.”

“When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine, and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly true to an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the highest places was foul in both—she was all these things in an age when crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries, and beastialities.”― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”

“When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain the whole result, nor even the largest part of it; no, it is the atmosphere in which the talent was cradled that explains; it is the training it received while it grew, the nurture it got from reading, study, example, the encouragement it gathered from self-recognition and recognition from the outside at each stage of its development: when we know all these details, then we know why the man was ready when his opportunity came.”― Mark Twain, How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson and Other Tales of Rebellious Girls and Daring Young Women

“When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy–that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.”

“When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then in New Orleans—and you say, ‘What, again?—no, I’ve had enough;’ the other party says, ‘But just this one time more—this is for lagniappe.’ When the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too high, and sees by the young lady’s countenance that the edifice would have been better with the top compliment left off, he puts his ‘I beg pardon—no harm intended,’ into the briefer form of ‘Oh, that’s for lagniappe.’ If the waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills a gill of coffee down the back of your neck, he says ‘For lagniappe, sah,’ and gets you another cup without extra charge.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them–then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.”

“When you find yourself on the side of the majority, you should pause and reflect.”

“When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain. Notebook”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.”― Mark Twain, Notebook

“When you want genuine music — music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth’s pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose, — when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!”

“When your opinions start to coincide with those of the majority, it is time to reconsider your opinions.”― Mark Twain

“Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, this is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Whenever you are popular just pause and see the reflect”

“Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform — (or pause and reflect).”― Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks and Journals, Volume II: 1877-1883

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”

“Wherefore, I beseech you let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I should but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself to see the desolation wrought.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.”― Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

“Wherever he found his speech growing too modern — which was about every sentence or two — he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as “exceeding sore,” “and it came to pass,” etc., and made things satisfactory again. “And it came to pass” was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“Which is him?” The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go in a book someday.”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.”

“Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.”

“White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting, skylarking”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it?”― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first!”
Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer” ― Samuel Clemmons, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.”― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“Whoever is happy will make others happy too.”

“Whoo-oop! I’m the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!—Look at me! I’m the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother’s side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar’l of whiskey for breakfast when I’m in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I’m ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood’s my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!—and lay low and hold your breath, for I’m bout to turn myself loose!”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”

“Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.”― Mark Twain

“Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.”

“Why shouldn’t we be honest and honorable, and lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn’t we be consistent, and either lie all the time or not at all?”

“Why will people be so stupid as to suppose themselves the only foreigners among a crowd of ten thousand persons?”― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Why, an’ thou shouldst live a thousand years thou’dst never hear so masterful a cursing. Alack, her art died with her. There be base and weakling imitations left, but no true blasphemy.”

“Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.”― Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

“Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them—and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution–these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little— crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand. ― Mark Twain, The Chronicle of Young Satan, Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts

“will say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religious. Nothing could divert them from the regular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the Church. More”― Mark Twain, The Complete Mark Twain Collection

“Wilson stopped and stood silent. Inattention dies a quick and sure death when a speaker does that.”― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson and Other Tales

“wish you were with the cannibals and it was dinner-time.”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation. ”

“With his story in one’s mind he can almost see his benignant countenance moving calmly among the haggard faces of Milan in the days when the plague swept the city, brave where all others were cowards, full of compassion where pity had been crushed out of all other breasts by the instinct of self-preservation gone mad with terror, cheering all, praying with all, helping all, with hand and brain and purse, at a time when parents forsook their children, the friend deserted the friend, and the brother turned away from the sister while her pleadings were still wailing in his ears.”― Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

“Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time—just as men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it un-disturbed. It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music—the reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet—no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer. The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet. Presently Tom checked his whistle. A stranger was before him—a boy a shade larger than himself. A new-comer of any age or either sex was an im-pressive curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg. This boy was well dressed, too—well”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whitless heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time-just as a man’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a valued novelty in whistling…He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet- no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“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.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.”

“Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.”

“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do.
Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”― Mark Twain

“Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.”― Mark Twain

“Work like you don’t need the money. Dance like no one is watching. And love like you’ve never been hurt.”

“Work! work! and God will work with us!”― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.”

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.”

“Write what you know.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.”

“Write without pay until someone offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this as a sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.”

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. -Mark Twain”

“Written things are not for speech; their form is literary; they are stiff, inflexible, and will not lend themselves to happy and effective delivery with the tongue–where their purpose is to merely entertain, not instruct; they have to be limbered up, broken up, colloquialized and turned into common forms of premeditated talk–otherwise they will bore the house and not entertain it.”

“Yes – en I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn’ want no mo’.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is five hundred years away easier than he can a thing that’s only five hundred seconds off.” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“Yes, I am of old family, and not illiterate. I am a fossil.”   “A which?”   “Fossil. The first horses were fossils. They date back two million years.”

“Yes, King Edward VI lived only a few years, poor boy, but he lived them worthily.”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“Yes, one might say that her motto was “Work! stick to it; keep on working!” for in war she never knew what indolence was. And whoever will take that motto and live by it will likely to succeed. There’s many a way to win in this world, but none of them is worth much without good hard work back out of it.” ― Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped.
-from the Prefatory” ― Twain, Mark

“Yes, we were sold at auction, like swine.  In a big town and an active market we should have brought a good price; but this place was utterly stagnant and so we sold at a figure which makes me ashamed, every time I think of it.  The King of England brought seven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king was easily worth twelve dollars and I as easily worth fifteen.  But that is the way things always go; if you force a sale on a dull market, I don’t care what the property is, you are going to make a poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it.” ― Mark Twain, Complete Works of Mark Twain

“Yes,” I said, “that is what I mean to say. I am not going to vote for him.” The others began to find their voices. They sang the same note. They said that when a party’s representatives choose a man, that ends it. If they choose unwisely it is a misfortune, but no loyal member of the party has any right to withhold his vote. He has a plain duty before him and he can’t shirk it. He must vote for that nominee. I said that no party held the privilege of dictating to me how I should vote. That if party loyalty was a form of patriotism, I was no patriot, and that I didn’t think I was much of a patriot anyway, for oftener than otherwise what the general body of Americans regarded as the patriotic course was not in accordance with my views; that if there was any valuable difference between being an American and a monarchist it lay in the theory that the American could decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn’t; whereas”― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

“Yes. And I’m rich now when I think about it. I own myself, and I’m worth eight hundred dollars. I wish I had the money. Then I wouldn’t ever want anything else”

“Yet little Tom was not unhappy. He had a hard time of it but did not know it. It was the sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had; therefore he supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing.”― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“you are going to find out the facts of a thing, what’s the sense in guessing out what ain’t the facts and wasting ammunition?” ― Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Detective

“You are not you–you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream–your dream, a creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me
In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever—for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!
Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago—centuries, ages, eons, ago!—for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities.
Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane—like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell—mouths mercy and invented hell—mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites a poor, abused slave to worship him!
You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks—in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier.
“It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream—a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?”

“You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of you imagination. You may not see your ears, but they will be there.”― Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog and Other Stories

“You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears, but they will be there.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. (the other Mark).”

“You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears, but they will be there. HUNTING”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“You can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and frivolous character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, I think. She had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored resentments for injuries done her, but put them easily out of her mind and forgot them; and she taught her children her kindly way, and from her we learned also to be brave and prompt in time of danger, and not to run away, but face the peril that threatened friend or stranger, and help him the best we could without stopping to think what the cost might be to us. And she taught us not by words only, but by example, and that is the best way and the surest and the most lasting. Why, the brave things she did, the splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about it—well, you couldn’t help admiring her, and you couldn’t help imitating her; not even a King Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her society. So, as you see, there was more to her than her education.”― Mark Twain, A Dog’s Tale

“You cannot surprise an individual more than twice with the same marvel”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“You cannot trust your eyes, if your imagination is out of focus.”

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“You can’t pray a lie — I found that out.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“You can’t pray a lie” Huck Finn” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“You can’t pray a lie.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“You can’t pray a lie–I found that out.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“You can’t put too much spin on a miracle.”

“You cant reach old age by another man’s road, my habits protect my life but they would assassinate you”

“You can’t reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“You can’t throw too much style into a miracle.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“​You don’t know about me without you have read a book called “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.”― Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.”

“you give me much more of your sass I’ll take and bounce a rock off’n your head.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“You gwyne to have considerable trouble in yo’ life, en considerable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to git well agin.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“You have heretofore found out, by my teachings, that man is a fool; you are now aware that woman is a damned fool.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

“You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn’t be anywhere but there, not for the world.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

“You lied to the undertaker, and said your health was failing–a wholly commendable lie, since it cost you nothing and pleased the other man.”― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand.”

“You meet people who forget you. You forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can’t forget. Those are your ‘friends”

“What’s your name?”
“Becky Thatcher. What’s yours? Oh, I know. It’s Thomas Sawyer.”
“That’s the name they lick me by. I’m Tom when I’m good. You call me Tom, will you?”
“Yes” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“You perceive,” he said, “that you have made continual progress. Cain did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine arts of military organization and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gunpowder; a few centuries from now he will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that without Christian civilization war must have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time.”― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks–in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier.
“It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream–a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought–a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!”
He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.”― Mark Twain

“You say to yourself, ‘How can a little girl be a grandmother.’ It takes some little time to accept and realize the fact that while you have been growing old, your friends have not been standing still, in that matter.”― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to;”― Mark Twain, Mark Twain: The Complete Novels

“You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags — that is loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“You see, he was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and then. It was a several years’ cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don’t think any of them actually expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it.”― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“You think you are reading proof, whereas you are merely reading your own mind; your statement of the thing is full of holes & vacancies but you don’t know it, because you are filling them from your mind as you go along. Sometimes–but not often enough–the printer’s proof-reader saves you–& offends you–with this cold sign in the margin: (?) & you search the passage & find that the insulter is right–it doesn’t say what you thought it did: the gas-fixtures are there, but you didn’t light the jets”

“You will be more disappointed in life by the things that you do not do than by the things that you do.”

“Your breath comes short and quick, you are feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest—and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of gold. Sometimes”― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“your lip,” says he. “You’ve put on considerable many frills since I been away. I’ll take you down”― Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“You’re never wrong to do the right thing” ― Samuel Clemens

---

“Well, that night we had our show; but there warn’t only about twelve people there – just enough to pay expenses. And they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep. So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn’t come up to Shakespeare; what they wanted was low comedy – and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned. He said he could size their style. So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village. The bills said:

AT THE COURT HOUSE!
FOR 3 NIGHTS ONLY!
The World-Renowned Tragedians
DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER!
AND
EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER!
Of the London and Continental Theatres,
In their Thrilling Tragedy of
THE KING’S CAMELEOPARD,
OR
THE ROYAL NONESUCH ! ! !
Admission 50 cents.
Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said:

LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED.

“There,” says he, “if that line don’t fetch them, I don’t know Arkansaw!” ― Mark Twain

“If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks. He would not stoop to ask for any man’s compliments, praises, flatteries; and He would be far above exacting them. I would have Him as self-respecting as the better sort of man in these regards.

He would not be a merchant, a trader. He would not buy these things. He would not sell, or offer to sell, temporary benefits of the joys of eternity for the product called worship. I would have Him as dignified as the better sort of man in this regard.

He would value no love but the love born of kindnesses conferred; not that born of benevolences contracted for. Repentance in a man’s heart for a wrong done would cancel and annul that sin; and no verbal prayers for forgiveness be required or desired or expected of that man.

In His Bible there would be no Unforgiveable Sin. He would recognize in Himself the Author and Inventor of Sin and Author and Inventor of the Vehicle and Appliances for its commission; and would place the whole responsibility where it would of right belong: upon Himself, the only Sinner.

He would not be a jealous God–a trait so small that even men despise it in each other.

He would not boast.

He would keep private Hs admirations of Himself; He would regard self-praise as unbecoming the dignity of his position.

He would not have the spirit of vengeance in His heart. Then it would not issue from His lips.

There would not be any hell–except the one we live in from the cradle to the grave.

There would not be any heaven–the kind described in the world’s Bibles.

He would spend some of His eternities in trying to forgive Himself for making man unhappy when he could have made him happy with the same effort and he would spend the rest of them in studying astronomy.” ― Mark Twain

“She was as simple-hearted and honest as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with “hell following after.”― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

 “It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one—a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hot when I arrive—as follows:

Radishes. Baked apples, with cream
Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs.
American coffee, with real cream.
American butter.
Fried chicken, Southern style.
Porter-house steak.
Saratoga potatoes.
Broiled chicken, American style.
Hot biscuits, Southern style.
Hot wheat-bread, Southern style.
Hot buckwheat cakes.
American toast. Clear maple syrup.
Virginia bacon, broiled.
Blue points, on the half shell.
Cherry-stone clams.
San Francisco mussels, steamed.
Oyster soup. Clam Soup.
Philadelphia Terapin soup.
Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style.
Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad.
Baltimore perch.
Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas.
Lake trout, from Tahoe.
Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans.
Black bass from the Mississippi.
American roast beef.
Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style.
Cranberry sauce. Celery.
Roast wild turkey. Woodcock.
Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore.
Prairie liens, from Illinois.
Missouri partridges, broiled.
‘Possum. Coon.
Boston bacon and beans.
Bacon and greens, Southern style.
Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips.
Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus.
Butter beans. Sweet potatoes.
Lettuce. Succotash. String beans.
Mashed potatoes. Catsup.
Boiled potatoes, in their skins.
New potatoes, minus the skins.
Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot.
Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes.
Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper.
Green corn, on the ear.
Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style.
Hot hoe-cake, Southern style.
Hot egg-bread, Southern style.
Hot light-bread, Southern style.
Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk.
Apple dumplings, with real cream.
Apple pie. Apple fritters.
Apple puffs, Southern style.
Peach cobbler, Southern style
Peach pie. American mince pie.
Pumpkin pie. Squash pie.
All sorts of American pastry.

Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way.
Ice-water—not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.” ― Mark Twain

“I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking–thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

“All right, then, I’ll GO to hell”–and tore it up.” – Mark Twain

“You know my present way of life. Can you suggest any additions to it, in the way of crime, that will reasonably insure my going to some other place.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“He done his level best.

Was he a mining on the flat..
He done it with a zest..
Was he a leading of the choir..
He done his level best.

If he’d a reg’lar task to do,
He never took no rest..
Or if ’twas off and on the same..
He done his level best.

If he was preachin’ on his beat,
He’d tramp from east to west,
And north to south ..in cold and heat..
He done his level best.

He’d Yank a sinner outen (Hades),
And land him with the blest;
Then snatch a prayer’n waltz in again,
And do his level best.

He’d cuss and sing and howl and pray,
And dance and drink and jest,
He done his level best.

Whate’er this man was sot to do
He done it with a zest;
No matter what his contract was,
He’d do his level best…”
― Mark Twain, The Complete Humorous Sketches and Tales of Mark Twain

“…If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky way. properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it.

“The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?” ― Mark Twain

“He killed all those people — every male.

They had offended the Deity in some way. We know what the offense was, without looking; that is to say, we know it was a trifle; some small thing that no one but a god would attach any importance to. It is more than likely that a Midianite had been duplicating the conduct of one Onan, who was commanded to “go into his brother’s wife” — which he did; but instead of finishing, “he spilled it on the ground.” The Lord slew Onan for that, for the lord could never abide indelicacy….

Some Midianite must have repeated Onan’s act, and brought that dire disaster upon his nation. If that was not the indelicacy that outraged the feelings of the Deity, then I know what it was: some Midianite had been pissing against the wall. I am sure of it, for that was an impropriety which the Source of all Etiquette never could stand. A person could piss against a tree, he could piss on his mother, he could piss on his own breeches, and get off, but he must not piss against the wall — that would be going quite too far. The origin of the divine prejudice against this humble crime is not stated; but we know that the prejudice was very strong — so strong that nothing but a wholesale massacre of the people inhabiting the region where the wall was defiled could satisfy the Deity.”― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Old Man: The impulse which moves a person to do things – The only impulse that ever moves a person to do things

Young Man: The only one! Is there but one?

O.M. That is all

Y.M. Well, certainly that is a strange doctrine. What is the sole impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing?

O.M. The impulse to CONTENT HIS OWN SPIRIT – the NECESSITY of contenting his own spirit and WINNING ITS APPROVAL.”― Mark Twain

“The moment I got a chance I slipped aside privately and touched an ancient common looking man on the shoulder and said, in an insinuating, confidential way:

“Friend, do me a kindness. Do you belong to the asylum, or are you just on a visit or something like that?”

He looked me over stupidly, and said:

“Marry, fair sir, me seemeth—”

“That will do,” I said; “I reckon you are a patient.” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

“-Henry, I’m ashamed of you. You don’t half thank the good gentleman. May I do it for you?’

-Indeed you shall, dear, if you can improve it. Let us see you try.

She walked to my man, got up in his lap, put her arm round his neck, and kissed him right on the mouth. Then the two old gentlemen shouted with laughter, but I was dumfounded, just petrified, as you may say.” ― Mark Twain, The Million Pound Bank Note

“I reminded him that I was there by appointment to offer him my book for publication. He began to swell and went on swelling and swelling and swelling until he had reached the size of a god of about the second or third degree. Then the fountains of his great deep were broken up and for two or three minutes I couldn’t see him for the rain.

It was words, only words, but they fell so thickly that they darkened the atmosphere. Finally he made an imposing sweep with his right hand which took in the whole room, and said:

“ Books—look around you! Every place are books that are waiting for publication. Do I want any more? Excuse me, I don’t. Good morning.” ― Mark Twain

Dum vivimus vivamus
“While we live, let us live”.

This too shall pass… I Corinthians 10:12

Be still and know… Psalm 46:10

“Damn my eggs. Damn all the eggs there ever was.” A Raisin in the Sun

Anything is possible, but many things are highly unlikely.
Only those who will risk going to far can possibly find
out how far one can go. T.S. Eliot

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
TS Eliot” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

Articles written by Mark Twain published by the Daily Morning Call

A TRIP TO THE CLIFF HOUSE 
If one tire of the drudgeries and scenes of the city, and would breathe the fresh air of the sea, let him take the cars and omnibuses, or, better still, a buggy and pleasant steed, and, ere the sea breeze sets in, glide out to the Cliff House. We tried it a day or two since. Out along the rail road track, by the pleasant homes of our citizens, where architecture begins to put off its swaddling clothes, and assume form and style, grace and beauty, by the neat gardens with their green shrubbery and laughing flowers, out where were once sand hills and sand-valleys, now streets and homesteads. If you would doubly enjoy pure air, first pass along by Mission Street Bridge, the Golgotha of Butcherville, and wind along through the alleys where stand the whiskey mills and grunt the piggeries of Uncle Jim. Breathe and inhale deeply ere you reach this castle of Udolpho, and then hold your breath as long as possible, for Arabia is a long way thence, and the balm of a thousand flowers is not for sale in that locality. Then away you go over paved, or planked, or Macadamized roads, out to the cities of the dead, pass between Lone Mountain and Calvary, and make a straight due west course for the ocean. Along the way are many things to please and entertain, especially if an intelligent chaperon accompany you. Your eye will travel over in every direction the vast territory which Swain, Weaver & Co. desire to fence in, the little homesteads by the way, Dr. Rowell’s arena castle, and Zeke Wilson’s Bleak House in the sand. Splendid road, ocean air that swells the lungs and strengthens the limbs. Then there’s the Cliff House, perched on the very brink of the ocean, like a castle by the Rhine, with countless sea-lions rolling their unwieldy bulks on the rocks within rifle-shot, or plunging into and sculling about in the foaming waters. Steamers and sailing craft are passing, wild fowl scream, and sea-lions growl and bark, the waves roll into breakers, foam and spray, for five miles along the beach, beautiful and grand, and one feels as if at sea with no rolling motion nor sea-sickness, and the appetite is whetted by the drive and the breeze, the ocean’s presence wins you into a happy frame, and you can eat one of the best dinners with the hungry relish of an ostrich. Go to the Cliff House. Go ere the winds get too fresh, and if you like, you may come back by Mountain Lake and the Presidio, overlook the Fort, and bow to the Stars and Stripes as you pass.

– by Mark Twain written for The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 25, 1864

BURGLAR ARRESTED 
John Richardson, whose taste for a cigar must be inordinate, gratified it on Saturday night last by forcing his way into a tobacconist’s on Broadway, near Kearny street, and helping himself to fourteen hundred smokes. In his hurry, however, he did not select the best, as the stolen tobacco was only valued at fifty dollars. He was congratulating himself last evening in a saloon on Dupont street, in having secured weeds for himself and all his friends, when lo! a Rose bloomed before his eyes, and he wilted. The scent of that flower of detectives was too strong even for the aroma of the stolen cigars. Richardson was conveyed to the station-house, where a kit of neat burglar’s tools was found on his person. He is now reposing his limbs on an asphaltum floor – a bed hard as the ways of unrighteousness.

• by Mark Twain for The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 7, 1864

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

 

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

 

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend’s friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel’s, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel’s Camp. I added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me any thing about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.

Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was any thing ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:

There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of ’49 or may be it was the spring of ’50 I don’t recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume wasn’t finished when he first came to the camp; but any way, he was the curiosest man about always betting on any thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get any body to bet on the other side; and if he couldn’t, he’d change sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him any way just so’s he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn’t be no solittry thing mentioned but that feller’d offer to bet on it, and -take any side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you’d find him flush, or you’d find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he’d bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he’d bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he’d bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg’lar, to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him he would bet on any thing the dangdest feller. Parson Walker’s wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn’s going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was considerable better thank the Lord for his inftnit mercy and coming on so smart that, with the blessing of Providence, she’d get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, “Well, I’ll risk two- and-a-half that she don’t, any way.”

Thish-yer Smiley had a mare the boys called her the fifteen- minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she’d get excited and desperate- like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust, and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down.

And he had a little small bull pup, that to look at him you’d think he wan’s worth a cent, but to set around and look ornery, and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him, he was a different dog; his underjaw’d begin to stick out like the fo’castle of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover, and shine savage like the furnaces. And a dog might tackle him, and bully- rag him, and bite him, and throw him over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson which was the name of the pup Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was satisfied, and hadn’t expected nothing else and the bets being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up; and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j’int of his hind leg and freeze on it not chew, you understand, but only jest grip and hang on till they thronged up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once that didn’t have no hind legs, because they’d been sawed off by a circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet bolt, he saw in a minute how he’d been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he ‘peered sur- prised, and then he looked sorter discouraged-like, and didn’t try no more to win the fight, and so he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn’t no hind legs for him to take bolt of, which was his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if he’d lived, for the stuff was in him, and he had genius I know it, because he hadn’t had no opportunities to speak of, and it don’t stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances, if he hadn’t no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when I think of that last fight of his’n, and the way it turned out.

Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tom- cats, and all of them kind of things, till you couldn’t rest, and you couldn’t fetch nothing for him to bet on but he’d match you. He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal’klated to edercate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He’d give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you’d see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut see him turn one summerset, or may be a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of catching flies, and kept him in practice so constant, that he’d nail a fly every time as far as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do most any thing and I believe him. Why, I’ve seen him set Dan’l Webster down here on this floor Dan’l Webster was the name of the frog and sing out, “Flies, Dan’l, flies!” and quicker’n you could wink, he’d spring straight up, and snake a fly off’n the counter there, and flop down on the floor again as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn’t no idea he’d been doin’ any more’n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightforward as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had traveled and been everywheres, all said he laid over any frog that ever they see.

Well, Smiley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him down town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller a stranger in the camp, he was come across him with his box, and says:

“What might it be that you’ve got in the box?”

And Smiley says, sorter indifferent like, “It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, may be, but it an’t it’s only just a frog.”

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says, “H’m so ’tis. Well, what’s he good for?”

“Well,” Smiley says, easy and careless, “He’s good enough for one thing, I should judge he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.”

The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, “Well, I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.”

“May be you don’t,” Smiley says. “May be you understand frogs, and may be you don’t understand ’em; may be you’ve had experience, and may be you an’t only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I’ve got my opinion, and I’ll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.”

And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, “Well, I’m only a stranger here, and I an’t got no frog; but if I had a frog, I’d bet you.”

And then Smiley says, “That’s all right that’s all right if you’ll hold my box a minute, I’ll go and get you a frog.” And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley’s, and set down to wait.

So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a tea- spoon and filled him full of quail shot filled him pretty near up to his chin and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this feller, and says:

“Now, if you’re ready, set him alongside of Dan’l, with his fore- paws just even with Dan’l, and I’ll give the word.” Then he says, “One two three jump!” and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan’l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders so like a Frenchman, but it wan’s no use he couldn’t budge; he was planted as solid as an anvil, and he couldn’t no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he didn’t have no idea what the matter was, of course.

The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulders this way at Dan’l, and says again, very deliberate, “Well, I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.”

Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan’l a long time, and at last he says, “I do wonder what in the nation that frog throw’d off for I wonder if there an’t something the matter with him he ‘pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.” And he ketched Dan’l by the nap of the neck, and lifted him up and says, “Why, blame my cats, if he don’t weigh five pound!” and turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never ketchd him. And-

[Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what was wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he said: “Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy I an’t going to be gone a second.”

But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away.

At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he button- holed me and recommenced:

“Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yeller one-eyed cow that didn’t have no tail, only jest a short stump like a bannanner, and ”

“Oh! hang Smiley and his afflicted cow!” I muttered, good-naturedly, and bidding the old gentleman good-day, I departed.

—- by Mark Twain, (1867)