Quotes from Mark Twain

I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit.

After a long time and many questions, Satan said, The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the -- well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?

A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.

You cant reach old age by another man's road, my habits protect my life but they would assassinate you

We recognize that there are no trivial occurrences in life if we get the right focus on them.

Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?

I've suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened.

There ain't anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about. -- Huck Finn

One mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself

There is nothing in the world like persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it;

I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway.

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.

Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If the Eiffel tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that that skin what what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.

Mosques are plenty, churches are plenty, graveyards are plenty, but morals and whiskey are scarce. The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy. It makes our cheeks burn with shame to see such a thing permitted here in Turkey. We do not mind it so much in Salt Lake, however.

A well put together unreality is pretty hard to beat.

We shall remember ...... Damascus, the Pearl of the East, the pride of Syria, the fabled garden of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian Nights,the oldest metropolis on Earth, the one city in all the world that has kept its name and held its place and looked serenely on while the Kingdoms and Empires of four thousand years have risen to life, enjoyed their little season of pride and pomp, and then vanished and been forgotten

There isn't a parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the equator if it had had its rights.

No narrative that tells the facts of a man's life in the man's own words can be uninteresting.

I've experienced a great deal of pain and suffering in my life ...... most of which has never happened.

and so when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.

FOR EVERY GRAIN OF SAND IN OUR WORLD, THERE ARE ONE MILLION STARS IN THE UNIVERSE.

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.

The Mississippi River towns are comely, clean, well built, and pleasing to the eye, and cheering to the spirit. The Mississippi Valley is as reposeful as a dreamland, nothing worldly about it . . . nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon.