Quotes from Mark Twain

all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before. Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave

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

Presently a vagrant poodle dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now 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.

Well, let her—she should see that he could be as indifferent as some other people.

When your opinions start to coincide with those of the majority, it is time to reconsider your opinions.

A consciously exaggerated compliment is an offense.

El perdón es la fragancia que la violeta suelta cuando se levanta el zapato que la aplastó.

A robber is more high-toned than what a pirate is—as a general thing. In most countries they're awful high up in the nobility—dukes and such.

As a rule it will listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you. **About the mind

What's gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!

The expeditions were often out of meat, and scant of clothes, but they always had the furniture and other requisites for the mass; they were always prepared, as one of the quaint chroniclers of the time phrased it, to 'explain hell to the savages.

But the cruelest habit the modern prophecy-savans have, is that one of coolly and arbitrarily fitting the prophetic shirt on to the wrong man. They do it without regard to rhyme or reason.

On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant island) half a mile long, which had been formed during the past nineteen years. Since there was so much time to spare that nineteen years of it could be devoted to the construction of a mere towhead, where was the use, originally, in rushing this whole globe through in six days?

bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me.

A thistle grows about here which has needles on it that would pierce through leather, I think; if one touches you, you can find relief in nothing but profanity.

Sir Walter Scott created rank & caste in the South and also reverence for and pride and pleasure in them. Life on the Mississippi Don Quixote swept admiration for medieval chivalry-silliness out of existence. Ivanhoe restored it. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

good decisions come from experience. experience comes from making bad decisions.

Of all the animals, man is the only one who inflicts pain for the pleasure of it.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the head of navigation and the end of the world. The information the ancients didn't have was very voluminous.

Sometimes I wish we could hear of a country that's out of kings.

The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes

The difference between the ALMOST right word and the RIGHT word is really quite a large matter. It's the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.