Mark Twain Quotes
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Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
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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.
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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.
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When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.
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Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more.
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There has never been a Protestant boy nor a Protestant girl whose mind the Bible has not soiled.
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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.
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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.
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...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...
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Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
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He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
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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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Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
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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.
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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.
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When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
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How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.
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Herodotus says, 'Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.'
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There isn't anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can't believe it.