Quotes from Mark Twain

But that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow.

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.

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.

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.

Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.

Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.

The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right.

But I... never could make a good impromptu speech without several hours to prepare it.

It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.

Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

But when the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface.

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

We saw a faraway town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond it, on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets, the first I had ever seen, out of a picture."Bridgeport?" said I, pointing."Camelot," said he.

I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't.... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.

Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.

A person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful.

When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the reason that I have known him before—met him on the river.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.