Quotes from Mark Twain

If you have to swallow a frog, don't stare at it too long.

We catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed, only a kind of low chuckle. We had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next.

Don't you worry your pretty little mind. People throw rocks at things that shine and life makes love look hard

Behold, the fool saith, Put not all thine eggs in the one basket - which is but a matter of saying, Scatter your money and your attention; but the wise man saith, Pull all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET. - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.

Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said, Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children's alone, and she took wing and went off to see about it -- which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once.

I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of therest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.

If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.

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

The wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling.

I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable.

The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world'd luxuries, king by grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented.

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

To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, Our Country, right or wrong, and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe.

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.