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Churchill
Communications
Computers & Technology
Conflict
Experience & Knowledge
George Bernard Shaw
Robert Heinlein
Law
Life & Death
Literature & Reading
Love & Sex
Mark Twain
Media
Misc.
Pain & Suffering
People
Plato
Politics
Power
Science & Research
Success & Failure
Temptation & Yielding
Theology
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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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