Top 2442 Quotes & Sayings by Mark Twain - Page 37

Shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?

We called him Barney for short. We couldn't use his real name, there wasn't time.

The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name right.

Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.

From the dome of St. Peter's one can see every notable object in Rome... He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe.

It was the most earnest ambition I ever had....Not that I ever really wanted to be a preacher, but because it never occurred to me that a preacher could be damned. It looked like a safe job.

If it would not look too much like showing off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is.

To one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest.

I've come loaded with statistics, for I've noticed that a man can't prove anything without statistics. No man can.

A healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any occupation.

A person who has during all time maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order.

Eternal rest sounds comforting in the pulpit; well, you try it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands.

Old habits cannot be thrown out the upstairs window. They have to be coaxed downstairs one step at a time.

A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows, and is just about as inspiring.

My axiom is, to succeed in business: avoid my example.

A man who carries a cat by the tail is getting experience that will always be helpful. He isn't likely to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn't likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!

We laugh and laugh. Then cry and cry- Then feebler laugh, Then die.

I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an unfamiliar opera.

It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.

I have never heard enough classical music to be able to enjoy it; & the simple truth is, I detest it. Not mildly, but will all my heart. To me an opera is the very climax & cap-stone of the absurd, the fantastic the unjustifiable. I hate the very name of opera - partly because of the nights of suffering I have endured in its presence, & partly because I want to love it and can't.

I cannot see the short, white curls Upon the forehead of an Ox, But what I see them dripping with That poor thing's blood, and hear the ax; When I see calves and lambs, I see Them led to death; I see no bird Or rabbit cross the open field But what a sudden shot is heard; A shout that tells me men aim true, For death or wound, doth chill me through. W.H. Davies I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.

It is my custom to keep on talking until I get the audience cowed.

I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with the blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael Angelo was dead.

When we do not know a person - and also when we do - we have to judge his size by the size and nature of his achievements, as compared with the achievements of others in his special line of business - there is no other way.

Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries hence- stuffed and in a museum.

The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession-and take the credit of the correction.

Newport, Rhode Island, that breeding place-that stud farm, so to speak-of aristocracy; aristocracy of the American type.

Missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All you had to do was to cure the head savage´s sick daughter by a miracle- a miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance- and immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes with a new convert´s enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself easy now. He would take the ax and convert the rest of the nation himself.

I bring you this stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Phillipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass.

It's so damned humiliating.

It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him.

There is not a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad.

Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we can enjoy theirs. It is not strange; for tastes are made, not born. I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired; but after all, the Scotchman would shake his head and say, 'Where's your haggis?' and the Fijan would sigh and say, 'Where's your missionary?'

The two Great Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet.

The English are mentioned in the Bible; Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you than the ninety-and -nine which you had to work for, and money won at faro or in stock snuggles into your heart in the same way.

Never learn to do anything: if you don't learn, you'll always find someone else to do it for you.

When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn't know.

Modesty died when clothes were born.

Truth is stranger than fiction-to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.

My land, the power of training! Of influence! Of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything.

I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me. But when they descend to telling the truth about me I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage.

And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows

Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life.

Warm summer sun, shine kindly here. Warm southern wind, blow softly here. Green sod above, lie light, lie light. Good night, dear Heart, Good night, good night.

In God We Trust. It is the choicest compliment that has ever been paid us, and the most gratifying to our feelings. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased; it always sounds well - In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true.

If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me Napoleonic in its grandeur.

Anybody can have ideas-the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

A wanton waste of projectiles.

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. . . . The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. . . . When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.

Alas! those good old days are gone, when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name and soothe his trouble to sleep simply by getting out his blocks and mortar and building an addition to a church.

I do not know what we should do without the pulpit. We could better spare the sun-the moon, anyway.

True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god.

Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.

Priapism is what happens when someone gets strangulated to the point of hypoxia.

Well, my book is written-let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library-and a pen warmed up in hell.

the rumors of the White Sox demise are greatly exaggerated.

Chastity - you can carry it too far.

You can never find a Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this saving knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient 'people say.'