“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”
― Mark Twain
“Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.”
― Mark Twain
Mark Twain
“Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.”
― Mark Twain
“The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.”
― Mark Twain
“Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.”
― Mark Twain
“The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.”
― Mark Twain
“Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.”
― Mark Twain
“Each of you, for himself or herself, by himself or herself, and on his or her own responsibility, must speak. It is a solemn and weighty responsibility and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government or politician. Each must decide for himself or herself alone what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man, to decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor. It is traitorous both against yourself and your country.
Let men label you as they may, if you alone of all the nation decide one way, and that way be the right way by your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country, hold up your head for you have nothing to be ashamed of.”
― Mark Twain
Mark Twain
“His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.”
― Mark Twain
“The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: A disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke, and tell indelicate stories— and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures.”
― Mark Twain, On Masturbation
“Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.”
― Mark Twain
“It don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.”
― Mark Twain
“Wherever he found his speech growing too modern — which was about every sentence or two — he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as “exceeding sore,” “and it came to pass,” etc., and made things satisfactory again. “And it came to pass” was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.”
― Mark Twain
“I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others need no preparation and got none.”
― Mark Twain
“I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”
― Mark Twain
“You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of you imagination. You may not see your ears, but they will be there.”
― Mark Twain
“Some people scorn a cat and think it not an essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.”
― Mark Twain
“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 beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right. Sometimes wrong. But no matter, the crowed follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized are secretly kindhearted, and shrink from inflicting pain. But in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don’t dare to assert themselves.”
― Mark Twain
“It was a dreadful thing to see. Humans beings can be awful cruel to one another.”
― Mark Twain
“But that is the way we are made: we don’t reason, where we feel; we just feel.”
― Mark Twain
“He had a dream and it shot him.”
― Mark Twain
“You can’t pray a lie–I found that out.”
― Mark Twain
“A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.”
― Mark Twain
“My works are like water. The works of the great masters are like wine. But everyone drinks water.
– From Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1885”
― Mark Twain
“I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father’s lifetime, and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past 11; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.
I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times, and I never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and precious to me that if I should break it I should feel as you, Sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you’ve got.”
― mark twain
“When ever I get the urge to write, I lie down and it usually passes.”
― Mark Twain
“A full belly is of little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart.”
― Mark Twain
“I said, “Don’t do nothing of the kind; it’s one of the most jackass ideas I ever struck;”
― Mark Twain
“Confound it, it’s foolish, Tom”
― Mark Twain
“This ain’t no thirty-seven year job, this is a thirty-eight year job, Tom Sawyer.”
― Mark Twain