Quotes from Mark Twain

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them. [ Letter to the Millicent (Rogers) Library , February 22, 1894]

Oh, there spoke the human! He is always pretending that the eternal bliss of heaven is such a priceless boon! Yes, and always keeping out of heaven just as long as he can! At bottom, you see, he is far from being certain about heaven.

So it shows that for all the brag you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of it for real unerringness. Jim says the same.

I desire to tamper with the jury law. I wish to alter it as to put a premium on intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers.

Some German words are so long that they have a perspective.

Well, go 'long and play; but mind you get back some time in a week, or I'll tan you.

It doesn't matter the size of the dog in the fight, rather the size of the fight in the dog.

She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the tomato vines and jimpson weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and shouted:

These are sad days in literature. Homer is dead. Shakespeare is dead. And I myself am not feeling at all well.

The poor morsel of food only whetted desire.

All say, How hard it is that we have to die—a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

So I held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't begun yet; and then I slipped down the ladder.

If he was a wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

It had not occurred to anybody in the crowd—that simple trick of inquiring about somebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away.  The magician was hit hard; it was an emergency that had never happened in his experience before, and it corked him; he didn't know how to meet it.

Warum wimmelt es nicht von Büchern, die Hohn und Spott über diese jämmerliche Welt, das sinnlose All, die gewalttätige, niederträchtige Menschheit ausgießen und die ganzen lumpigen Zustände der Lächerlichkeit preisgeben? Merkwürdig, Millionen von Menschen sterben jedes Jahr mit diesen Gefühlen im Herzen. Weshalb schreibe ich nicht so ein Buch? Weil ich eine Familie zu ernähren habe. Deshalb.

It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the wisdom of having told this candid gentleman, in the beginning, that my name was Smith.

SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man. When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop—that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can. Most

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me , but I think she enjoyed it

Držite se podalje od ljudi koji žele omalovažiti vaše ambicije. Sitne duše to rade svo vreme, a samo zaista veliki ljudi ulivaju vam ose?aj da i vi možete postati veliki

The average human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn't that, he is a practical joker. The result to the other person concerned is about the same: that is, he is made to suffer.

Meat first, and spoon vittles to top off on.

The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service—she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:

Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both, I

To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.