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Twain's Quotes & Sayings

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Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story - that is to say, thirty or forty years ago. Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. THE AUTHOR. HARTFORD, 1876. CHAPTER I "TOM!" No answer. "TOM!" No answer. "What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM! — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

The critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

There's a good spot tucked away somewhere in everybody. You'll be a long time finding it, sometimes. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

When you want genuine music
music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose,
when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo! — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with it. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

The guide showed us a coffee-colored piece of sculpture which he said was considered to have come from the hand of Phidias, since it was not possible that any other artist, of any epoch, could have copied nature with such faultless accuracy. The figure was that of a man without a skin; with every vein, artery, muscle, every fibre and tendon and tissue of the human frame, represented in detail. It looked natural, because somehow it looked as if it were in pain. A skinned man would be likely to look that way, unless his attention were occupied with some other matter. It was a hideous thing, and yet there was a fascination about it some where. I am sorry I saw it, because I shall always see it, now. I shall dream of it, sometimes. I shall dream that it is resting its corded arms on the bed's head and looking down on me with its dead eyes; I shall dream that it is stretched between the sheets with me and touching me with its exposed muscles and its stringy cold legs. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such a sweat to get him into the Constitution, it would be better all around. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping ... you'd see the ax flash and come down-you don't hear nothing; you see the ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the k'chunk!-it had took all that time to come over the water. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

To be human is to have one's little modicum of romance secreted away in one's composition. One never ceases to make a hero of one's self, (in private,) during life, but only alters the style of heroism from time to time as the drifting years belittle certain gods of his admiration and raise up others in their stead. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Shania Twain

I wanted to do a summary of my life and career. There's been so many different looks, and so many types of songs that have become iconic, so it was just kind of fun to look back on everything — Shania Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

It's not the good that die young, it's the lucky. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Jack White

We don't have to live up to the expectations of others. Passion is personal. As long as our passion is fueled with the right stuff then keep on plodding forward. I'll never be Mark Twain or Tom Clancy. But that's okay, because neither of them could teach you to mix a boundless number of grays, or where to place the catch light in a portrait. — Jack White

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Among you boys you have a game: you stand a row of bricks on end a few inches apart; you push a brick, it knocks its neighbor over, the neighbor knocks over the next brick
and so on till all the row is prostrate. That is human life. A child's first act knocks over the initial brick, and the rest will follow inexorably. If you could see into the future, as I can, you would see everything that was going to happen to that creature; for nothing can change the order of its life after the first event has determined it. That is, nothing will change it, because each act unfailingly begets an act, that act begets another, and so on to the end, and the seer can look forward down the line and see just when each act is to have birth, from cradle to grave. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

It's not the parts of the Bible I don't know that worries me ... it's the parts that I do. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

But it's awluz jis' so; people dat's sot, stays sot; dey won't look into noth'n'en fine it out f'r deyselves, en when you fine it out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical instruments - notably those of the violin - but it seems to set a piano's teeth on edge. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Is a person's public and private opinion the same? It is thought there have been instances. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Wynton Marsalis

Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is still in print. They're debating right now over Mark Twain. He's still available. Winslow Homer can still be seen. Our arts are - they're there. We got to go get them and understand that this is an important legacy for our country. — Wynton Marsalis

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

In the afternoon the ship's company assembled aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the asthmatic meodeon, and the consumptive clarinet crippled the Star Spangled Banner, the choir chased it to cover, and George came in with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and slaughtered it. Nobody mourned. We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not intentional and I do not endorse it). — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

That is an editor. He is trying to think of a word. He props his feet on a chair, which is the editor's way; then he can think better. I do not care much for this one; his ears are not alike; still, editor suggests the sound of Edward, and he will do. I could make him better if I had a model, but I made this one from memory. But is no particular matter; they all look alike, anyway. They are conceited and troublesome, and don't pay enough. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

That optimist of yours is always ready to turn hell's backyard into a play-ground. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Shania Twain

Writing is very much a playground - an artistic playground. It's the most fun thing I do. — Shania Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Our consciences take NO notice of pain inflicted upon others until it reaches a point where it gives pain to US. In ALL cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to another person's pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

The average American's simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

TOM!"
No answer.
"TOM!"
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!"
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service
she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

I got some of their jabber out of a book. S'pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy - what would you think?" "I wouldn' think nuffn; I'd take en bust him over de head - dat — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

The rain ... falls upon the just and the unjust alike; a thing which would not happen if I were superintending the rain's affairs. No, I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust outdoors, I would drown him. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Alexander Smith

We twain have met like the ships upon the sea, Who behold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet: One little hour! and then, away they speed On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam, To meet no more. — Alexander Smith

Twain's Quotes By Eric Weiner

bear. My armor dissolves. This is not happy India. This is the country where, as Mark Twain observed, every life is sacred, except human life. Indians may care deeply about their families and circle of friends, but they don't even notice anyone outside that circle. That's why Indian homes are spotless, while just a few feet outside the front door the trash is piled high. It's outside the circle. — Eric Weiner

Twain's Quotes By Shania Twain

When everything goes without a hitch, where's the challenge, the opportunity to find out what you're made of? — Shania Twain

Twain's Quotes By Hal Holbrook

Mark Twain married the daughter of one of New York State's leading Abolitionists, Jervis Langdon, who helped Frederick Douglass who became the great Negro leader to escape from slavery. — Hal Holbrook

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

One of life's most over-valued pleasures is sexual intercourse; of one of life's least appreciated pleasures in defecation. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny - the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs an flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering - spirits that's been dead ever so many years - and you always think they're talking about you. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

this is the only ship going east this time of the year, but there's a thousand coming west - what's a fair wind for us is a head wind to them - the Almighty's blowing a fair wind for a thousand vessels, and this tribe wants him to turn it clear around so as to accommodate one - and she a steamship at that! It ain't good sense, it ain't good reason, it ain't good Christianity, it ain't common human charity. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

In his later life Mark Twain was accorded high academic honors. Already, in 1888, he had received from Yale College the degree of Master of Arts, and the same college made him a Doctor of Literature in 1901. A year later the university of his own State, at Columbia, Missouri, conferred the same degree, and then, in 1907, came the crowning honor, when venerable Oxford tendered him the doctor's robe. "I don't know why they should give me a degree like that," he said, quaintly. "I never doctored any literature - I wouldn't know how. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Humor is man's greatest blessing. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Wayne W. Dyer

Mark Twain: It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble; it's what you know for sure that just ain't so. — Wayne W. Dyer

Twain's Quotes By Ari Bach

Nobody had ever even stepped out onto the surface, she read in school, leading to a broken line of memorable first statements. "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind," on Luna, "I wish that the peace I see here could bless the Earth again," from Mars, "This one's for you, Mark Twain," on Halley's Comet. And from the only manned landing on Venus, "Oh my holy fucking shit I think we're on the fucking ground! Get us up we're gonna fucking die! — Ari Bach

Twain's Quotes By Val Kilmer

Mark Twain was an artist working at the highest level. He wrote a book, his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, that put America on the world stage for literature. It's almost as if, if you start reading that book as a racist, you cannot finish it and still be a racist. — Val Kilmer

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Therein lies the defect of revenge: it's all in the anticipation; the thing itself is a pain, not a pleasure; at least the pain is the biggest end of it. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion
several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven ... The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Shania Twain

I spent a lot of my life holding back my cries, and I want to change that because it's not good for me. — Shania Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth
including America, of course
consist of pilferings from other people's wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty occupies a foot of land that was not stolen. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

There's no such thing as an uninteresting life, such a thing is an impossibility. Beneath the dullest exterior, there is a drama, a comedy, a tragedy. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

IN the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. But while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was a- standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

What is it that strikes a spark of humor from a man? It is the effort to throw off, to fight back the burden of grief that is laid on each one of us. In youth we don't feel it, but as we grow to manhood we find the burden on our shoulders. Humor? It is nature's effort to harmonize conditions. The further the pendulum swings out over woe the further it is bound to swing back over mirth. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

OU DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME WITHOUT YOU HAVE READ A BOOK BY THE name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly - Tom's Aunt Polly, she is - and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before. Now — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

In truth I care little about any party's politics-the man behind it is the important thing. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

A feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in
and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

This creature's career could produce but one result, and it speedily followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's son became an engineer. The doctor's and the post-master's sons became 'mud clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a barkeeper on a boat; four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge, became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary - from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year. Now some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river - at least our parents would not let us. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Man is the only religious animal. In the Holy task of smoothing his brother's path to the happiness of heaven, he has turned the globe into a graveyard. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

It's easy to endure adversity
if it happens to someone else. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are God's jokes. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

We can't reach old age by another man's road. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

The primary rule of business success is loyalty to your employer. That's all right as a theory. What is the matter with loyalty to yourself? — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle? - the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance? Why, it would merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boy brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, THAT ain't a picture! — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

The size of a misfortune is not determinable by an outsider's measurement of it but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

This is Huck Finn, a child of mine of shady reputation. Be good to him for his parent's sake. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

I DO know lots of things that I don't remember, and remember lots of things that I don't know. It's so with every educated person. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Thomas Osborne Davis

When boyhood's fire was in my blood
I read of ancient freemen
Of Greece and Rome who bravely stood
Three hundred men and three men

And then I prayed I yet might see
Our fetters rent in twain
And Ireland long a province be
A nation once again — Thomas Osborne Davis

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

I reck'n I knows sense when I sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said: "Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with another five, or here she stays. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Deyth Banger

I live with past called "DeYtH" ( a guy who is famous with cs 1.6 maps, mods, photoshop and e.t.c. and with my now "Mark Tven", you probably said "Oh,Oh I know this name this guy was a writer..." it's not taken the guy was called Mark Twain, I'm Tven, famous with awesome maps and interesting updates of cs 1.6 maps. To don't forget, I'm famous with my nick of past with writting. — Deyth Banger

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

A raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter's evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream ... I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people's tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Shania Twain

Even when life hits you like a Mack truck that's come out of nowhere, there is still a chance that you will survive, and although the road to recover may be slow, long, and even permanent, this doesn't mean you can't enjoy the rest of your life and be happy again. — Shania Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

The English youth's face simply showed a lively surprise, but nothing more. He went swinging along valleyward again, as if he did not know he had just swindled a coroner — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing, sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval - a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

What is joy without sorrow? what is success without failure? what is a win without a loss? what is health without illness? you have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. there is always going to be suffering. it's how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By David Bianculli

Mark Dawidziak is as comfy and entertaining a tour guide through the world of Mark Twain as Twain himself was a tour guide through the world. In other words, Mark Twain's Guide is such a fun read that the only thing dry about it is the ink. — David Bianculli

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Whatever a man's age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his button-hole. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Shania Twain

My life revolves around my child's routine. — Shania Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

The old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a man's pocket, because it cut down the doctor's bills like everything. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By John Richard Stephens

No alien land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but one, no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides me; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of it surfbeat is in my ear; I can see its garland crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud wrack; I can feel the woodland solitudes, I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.
-MARK TWAIN in an 1889 Dinner Speech at Delmonico's in New York to honor two baseball teams that had just returned from touring the Pacific, including Honolulu. — John Richard Stephens

Twain's Quotes By Ray Bradbury

Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito
out! Every simile that would have made sub-moron's mouth twitch
gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer
lost!
Every story slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like
in the finale
Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant's attention
shot dead. — Ray Bradbury

Twain's Quotes By David Baldacci

In his trip to Bethlehem Mark Twain had reported that all sects of Christians, except Protestants, had chapels under the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. However, he also observed that one group dared not trespass on the other's territory, proving beyond doubt, he noted, that even the grave of the Savior couldn't inspire peaceful worship among different beliefs. — David Baldacci

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Satan!" "Oh, it's true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

I'm all for prosperity. It's change I object to. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them flapping around in your head same as so much drawn butter. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

A Christian mother's first duty is to soil her child's mind, and she does not neglect it. Her lad grows up to be a missionary, and goes to the innocent savage and to the civilized Japanese, and soils their minds. Whereupon they adopt immodesty, they conceal their bodies, they stop bathing naked together. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter
exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place
the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and says: "Gentlemen - gentlemen! Hear me just a word - just a single word - if you please!

There's one way yet - let's go and dig up the corpse and look. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

Man is the only slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day, he is always some man's slave for wages, and does that man's work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Shania Twain

When you don't come from struggle, gaining appreciation is a quality that's difficult to come by. — Shania Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory
an office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title of "Mr. Secretary," gave to the great position an air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother. — Mark Twain

Twain's Quotes By Mark Twain

What's your name?"
"Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer."
"That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me Tom, will you?"
"Yes — Mark Twain