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Mark Twain

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
-- Mark Twain

A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.
-- Mark Twain

When one has tasted watermelon he knows what the angels eat.
-- Mark Twain

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
-- Mark Twain

The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury.
- Mark Twain

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain

In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has.
- Mark Twain

History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot.
-- Mark Twain

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter c would be dropped to be replased either by k or s, and likewise x would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which c would be retained would be the ch formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform w spelling, so that which and one would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish y replasing it with i and Iear 4 might fiks the g/j anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez c, y and x -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais ch, sh, and th rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
-- Mark Twain

... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
-- Mark Twain

... all the modern inconveniences ...
-- Mark Twain

... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and quite often picturesque liar.
-- Mark Twain

Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
-- Mark Twain

By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity
-- another man's, I mean.
-- Mark Twain

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
-- Mark Twain

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
-- Mark Twain

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?
-- Mark Twain

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
-- Mark Twain

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
-- Mark Twain

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain

In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man.
-- Mark Twain

In India, cold weather is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
-- Mark Twain

It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
-- Mark Twain

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
-- Mark Twain

She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
-- Mark Twain

Substitute damn every time you're inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
-- Mark Twain

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.
-- Mark Twain

The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
-- Mark Twain

The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
-- Mark Twain

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
-- Mark Twain

There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
-- Mark Twain

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
-- Mark Twain

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
-- Mark Twain

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
-- Mark Twain

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Courtesy of the Flatbush Escapee
-- Mark Twain

Always tell the truth; then you don't have to remember anything.
Courtesy of the Flatbush Escapee
-- Mark Twain

Be good and you will be lonesome.
-- Mark Twain

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
-- Mark Twain

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
-- Mark Twain

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
-- Mark Twain

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
-- Mark Twain

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
-- Mark Twain

Put all your eggs in the one basket and- WATCH THAT BASKET.
-- Mark Twain

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
-- Mark Twain

The best way to chear yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
-- Mark Twain

When you cannot get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one.
-- Mark Twain

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.
-- Mark Twain

We ought never do wrong when people are looking.
-- Mark Twain

Get the facts first. You can distort them later.
-- Mark Twain

When in doubt, tell the truth.
-- Mark Twain

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
-- Mark Twain

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
-- Mark Twain

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
-- Mark Twain

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.
-- Mark Twain

Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
-- Mark Twain

Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
-- Mark Twain

When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
-- Mark Twain

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-- Mark Twain

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
-- Mark Twain

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
-- Mark Twain

It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
-- Mark Twain

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
-- Mark Twain

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.
-- Mark Twain

If there are no cigars in Heaven, I shall not go.
-- Mark Twain

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
-- Mark Twain

A good lie will have traveled half way around the world while the truth is putting on her boots.
-- Mark Twain

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
-- Mark Twain

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
-- Mark Twain

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.
-- Mark Twain

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
-- Mark Twain

The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.
-- Mark Twain

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.
-- Mark Twain

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
-- Mark Twain

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
-- Mark Twain

It is not best that we should all think alike; it is differences of opinion that make horse races.
-- Mark Twain

Why is it that people rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the people involved.
-- Mark Twain

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.
-- Mark Twain

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
-- Mark Twain

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
-- Mark Twain

It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.
-- Mark Twain

It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
-- Mark Twain

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
-- Mark Twain

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
-- Mark Twain

Crank -- a man with a new idea until it succeeds.
-- Mark Twain

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
-- Mark Twain

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
-- Mark Twain

In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man.
-- Mark Twain

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
-- Mark Twain

No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live.
-- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I'm glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again.
-- Mark Twain

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.
-- Mark Twain

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.
-- Mark Twain

The difference between the right word and a similar word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
-- Mark Twain

There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.
-- Mark Twain

Virtue was never as respectable as money.
-- Mark Twain

 
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