Mark Twain Quotes
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The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
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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.
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That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unblessed 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 unblessed Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane.
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Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
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In the cotton States, after the war...the Jew came down in force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share of the present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him.
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It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.
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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.
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We are all alike, on the inside.
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Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
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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.
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I can live for two months on a good compliment.
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Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
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It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us - dreamers and indolent... It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich - these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.
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It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
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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.
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What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
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We are always anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
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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.
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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.'
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Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn't any.
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...it seems to be a law of the human constitution that those that deserve shall not have, and those that do not deserve shall get everything that is worth having. It is a sufficiently crazy arrangement, it seems to me.
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Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
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Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.