Top 2442 Quotes & Sayings by Mark Twain - Page 40

Writing is the easiest thing in the world.... Just try it sometime. I sit up with a pipe in my mouth and a board on my knees and I scribble away.

The spirit of wrath - not the words - is the sin; and the spirit of wrath is cursing. We begin to swear before we can talk.

Every time I read a Jane Austen novel, I feel like a bartender at the gates of heaven.

The equator was wisely put where it is, because if it had been run through Europe all the kings would have tried to grab it.

The only certainties in life are death and taxes.

None of us can be as great as God, but any of us can be as good.

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog: Nobody really enjoys it, and the frog generally dies as a result.

Tis Better to Sit there and LOOK the fool, than to open your mouth and prove it.

There ain't nothing more to write about and I'm rotten glad of it, because if I'd know'd what trouble it was to make a book, I wouldn't a tackled it.

Where are there are two desires in a man's heart he has no choice between the two but must obey the strongest, there being no such thing as free will in the composition of any human being that ever lived.

We had an abundance of mangoes, papaias and bananas here, but the pride of the islands, the most delicious fruit known to men, cherimoya, was not in season. It has a soft pulp, like a pawpaw, and is eaten with a spoon.

His money is twice tainted: taint yours and taint mine.

When I take up one of Jane Austen's books ... I feel like a barkeep entering the kingdom of heaven. I know what his sensation would be and his private comments. He would not find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so.

But we are all insane, anyway ... The suicides seem to be the only sane people.

To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have the on-looking world consent to it is finer.

Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century.

It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.

An occultation of Venus is not half so difficult as an eclipse of the sun, but because it comes seldom the world thinks it's a grand thing.

Being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time.

Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it; it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.

Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.

Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.

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.

History may not repeat, but it often rhymes.

We like to read about rich people in the newspapers; the papers know it, and they do their best to keep this appetite liberally fed.

I thoroughly believe that any man who's got anything worthwhile to say will be heard if he only says it often enough.

When you catch an adjective, kill it - perhaps the best possible advice for budding writers.

Now I can only pray that there may be a God -- and a heaven -- or something better.

It is the will of God that we must have critics and missionaries and congressmen and humorists, and we must bear the burden

It is an important thing, in our never-ending pursuit of happiness, to stop and just be happy for a while.

We do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we are apt to dissipate to excess.

No child should be permitted to grow up without exercise for imagination. It enriches life for him. It makes things wonderful and beautiful.

But the people cannot have wells, and so they take rain-water. Neither can they conveniently have cellars or graves, the town being built upon "made ground"; so they do without both, and few of the living complain, and none of the others.

She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot

As a rule, we go about with masks, we go about looking honest, and we are able to conceal ourselves all through the day.

As to the human race. There are many pretty and winning things about the human race. It is perhaps the poorest of all the inventions of all the gods but it has never suspected it once. There is nothing prettier than its naive and complacent appreciation of itself. It comes out frankly and proclaims without bashfulness or any sign of a blush that it is the noblest work of God. It has had a billion opportunities to know better, but all signs fail with this ass. I could say harsh things about it but I cannot bring myself to do it-it is like hitting a child.

Women cannot receive even the most palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it; that is, married women.

I was born with Halley's Comet and I expect to die upon its return

Would it not be prudent to get our civilization tools together, and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of Glass Beads and Theology, and Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasion), and balance the books, and arrive at the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to continue the business or sellout the property and start a new Civilization Scheme on the proceeds.

Training- training is everything; training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us.

Explore. Dream. Discover.

I like a thin book because it will Steady a Table, a leather volume because it will Strop a Razor, and a heavy book because it can be Thrown at a Cat.

You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters.

The only very marked difference between the average civilized man and the average savage is that the one is gilded and the other is painted.

The writing begins when you’ve finished. Only then do you know what you’re trying to say.

Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of Civilization-one for home consumption and one for the heathen market?

A baby is an angel whose wings decrease as his legs increase.

It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.

When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?

Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it.

Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brains. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat. Perhaps a couple of whales would be enough.

Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore, in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born --a hundred million years --and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.

The fear of lightning is one of the most distressing infirmities a human being can be afflicted with. It is mostly confined to women, but now and then you find it in a little dog, and sometimes a man.

There was a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in.

He does not care for flowers. Calls them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.

I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the angels speak English with an accent.

If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people