Mark Twain Quotes
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Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
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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 aint't agoing to no more. But 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.
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Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
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Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
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I sent down a circular check to the office to be cashed-a check good for its face in any part of the world, as any ordinary ass would know-but the ass who was assifying for the Queen Anne Mansions on salary didn't know it; indeed I think that his assitude transcended any assfulness I have ever met in this world or elsewhere.
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Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
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There was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only 'hooking,' while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing - and there was a command against that in the Bible. 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.
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Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane-but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it is evidence that you are a lunatic.
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A Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle.
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No accident ever comes late; it always arrives precisely on time.
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I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping.
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Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
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I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.
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A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.
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Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience - 4000 critics.
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I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.
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There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
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We have been housekeeping a fortnight, now-long enough to have learned how to pronounce the servants' names, but not how to spell them. We shan't ever learn to spell them; they were invented in Hungary and Poland, and on paper they look like the alphabet out on a drunk.
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The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
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Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs-the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest-you want them all to land in hell together, and right away.
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Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
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A critic never made or killed a book or a play. The people themselves are the final judges. It is their opinion that counts. After all, the final test is truth. But the trouble is that most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession and therefore are most economical in its use.
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Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
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Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.