-
A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.
Mark Twain
-
I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little-not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.
Mark Twain
-
A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.
Mark Twain
-
Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.
Mark Twain
-
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.
Mark Twain
-
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
-
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.
Mark Twain
-
Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
Mark Twain
-
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
Mark Twain
-
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.
Mark Twain
-
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 know one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side.
Mark Twain
-
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Mark Twain
-
Better a broken promise than none at all.
Mark Twain
-
I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
Mark Twain
-
What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.
Mark Twain
-
The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
Mark Twain
-
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Mark Twain
-
Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
Mark Twain
-
I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully with the average Jew in business-in either straight business or the questionable sort.
Mark Twain
-
Mr. Roosevelt is the most formidable disaster that has befallen the country since the Civil War-but the vast mass of the nation loves him, is frantically fond of him, even idolizes him. This is the simple truth. It sounds like a libel upon the intelligence of the human race, but it isn't; there isn't any way to libel the intelligence of the human race.
Mark Twain
-
Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.
Mark Twain
-
Whenever the human race assembles to a number exceeding four, it cannot stand free speech.
Mark Twain
-
In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.
Mark Twain
-
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
