Mark Twain Quotes
-
Carlyle said 'a lie cannot live.' It shows that he did not know how to tell them. If I had taken out a life policy on this one the premiums would have bankrupted me ages ago.
-
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.
-
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
-
It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge.
-
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 rather not.
-
There has never been a Protestant boy nor a Protestant girl whose mind the Bible has not soiled.
-
The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples - that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.
-
...a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute...
-
God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.
-
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.
-
I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo - that man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture - great in every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast - for luncheon - for dinner - for tea - for supper - for between meals. I like a change, occasionally.
-
Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more.
-
When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
-
The first thing I ever noticed about Miss Lyon was her incredible laziness. Laziness was my own specialty, & I did not like this competition. Dear me, I was to find out, in the course of time, that in the matter of laziness I was a runaway train on a down grade & she a-standing still. At my very laziest I could hear myself whiz, when she was around.
-
He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
-
Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
-
There isn't anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can't believe it.
-
How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.
-
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
-
Appendix D, The Awful German Language
-
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.