Quotes from Mark Twain

We met a great many other interesting people, among them Lewis Carroll, author of the immortal Alice--but he was only interesting to look at, for he was the silliest and shyest full-grown man I have ever met except Uncle Remus.

Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.

It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.

I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.

Schoolboy days are no happier than the days of afterlife, but we look back upon them regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school and how we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed – because we have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of the canonized ethic and remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden-sword pageants, and its fishing holidays.

Additional problems are the offspring of poor solutions.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything

Warm summer sun, shine brightly here, Warm Southern wind, blow softly here, Green sod above, lie light, lie light, Good night, dear heart; good night, good night.

I think the Cincinnati Enquirer must be edited by children.

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.

Yes - en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'.

We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.

The frankest and freest and privatest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter...

Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world

The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul.

Don't explain your author, read him right and he explains himself.

Never regret anything that made you smile

You cannot surprise an individual more than twice with the same marvel

During the gold rush its a good time to be in the pick and shovel business

Wilson stopped and stood silent. Inattention dies a quick and sure death when a speaker does that.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

When the Lord finished the world, he pronounced it good. That is what I said about my first work, too. But Time, I tell you, Time takes the confidence out of these incautious opinions. It is more than likely that He thinks about the world, now, pretty much as I think about the Innocents Abroad. The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.

Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the noblest work of God.

NOTICE Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR Per G.G.,Chief of Ordnance