Mark Twain Quotes
-
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.
-
Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
-
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.
-
If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.
-
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 practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory.
-
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.
-
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.
-
A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty.
-
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-
In 'Huckleberry Finn,' I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had.
-
It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people the Filipinos free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.
-
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.
-
Jesus died to save men - a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for the race that would have been act of a size proper to a god, & would have saved the whole race. However, why should anybody want to save the human race, or damn it either? Does God want its society? Does Satan?
-
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
-
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.
-
No accident ever comes late; it always arrives precisely on time.
-
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
-
...in October 1866 I broke out as a lecturer, and from that day to this I have always been able to gain my living without doing any work; for the writing of books and magazine matter was always play, not work. I enjoyed it; it was merely billiards to me.
-
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
-
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
-
...when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.
-
It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
-
I had now-not for the first time, nor the thousandth-trampled upon an old and wise and stern maxim of mine, to wit: 'Supposing is good, but finding out is better.'
-
I started out alone to seek adventures. You don't really have to seek them-that is nothing but a phrase-they come to you.