Quotes from Mark Twain

All men are ignorant, just on different subjects.

It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.

Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India.

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.

Ethical man: A Christian holding four aces.

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.

I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it.

A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.

Give an Irishman lager for a month and he's a dead man. An Irishman's stomach is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him.

To be satisfied with what one has; that is wealth. As long as one sorely needs a certain additional amount, that man isn't rich.

A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public

We can't reach old age by another man's road.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

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

It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom; it is another sight finer to fight for another man's.

It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.

....try the mustard, - a man can't know what turnips are in perfection without mustard.

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

That is, nobody but angels: they are always on deck when there is a miracle to the fore...

Of all the creatures that were made, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one—the solitary one—that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices—the most hateful. He is the only creature that has pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. Also—in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.

I had to have company — I was made for it, I think — so I made friends with the animals. They are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose. I think they are perfect gentlemen.

Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.

The captain had been telling how, in one of his Arctic voyages, it was so cold that the mate's shadow froze fast to the deck and had to be ripped loose by main strength. And even then he got only about two-thirds of it back.

Shut the door. Not that it lets in the cold but that it lets out the cozyness.