Quotes from Mark Twain

If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way, by yourself, in the night, you try it once – you'll see.

On one of these occasions, suddenly there hovered around the top of the rock a brightness of unequaled clearness and color, which, in increasingly smaller circles thickened, was the enchanting figure of the beautiful Lore.

Mrs Kerslake: but if there is no chance of being offered a place at Oxford, surely-? Simon Kerslake: Thats not what i said Mother, I shall be an undergraduate at Oxford by the first day of term

If you don't read the newspapers, you are uniformed. If you do read them, you are misinformed.

The time to being 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.

Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly invention)

I DO know lots of things that I don't remember, and remember lots of things that I don't know. It's so with every educated person.

As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.

Las personas son como la luna. Siempre tienen un lado oscuro que no enseñan a nadie. Mark Twain

Not a sparrow falls to the ground without His seeing it. But it falls, just the same. What good is seeing it fall?

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad

God made the Sea of Galilee and its surroundings as they are. Is it the province of Mr. Grimes to improve upon the work?

el origen secreto del humor no es la alegría sino la tristeza

Over middle of mantel, engraving—Washington Crossing the Delaware; on the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-lightning crewels by one of the young ladies—work of art which would have made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he could have foreseen what advantage was going to be taken of it.

I could see he meant no offense, but in my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners. Manners! he said. Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a fiction.

Everybody lies—every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey deception—and purposely. Even in sermons—but that is a platitude. In

What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.

a square, flat-roofed hovel, neatly frescoed, with its wall-tops gallantly bastioned and turreted with dried camel-refuse, gives to a landscape a feature that is exceedingly festive and picturesque, especially if one is careful to remember to stick in a cat wherever, about the premises, there is room for a cat to sit.

In Honolulu, I saw cats, individual cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat, lazy and sound asleep.

I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I shall have finished my travels.

I fancy you may tell the truth about yourself. But all of it? The black truth, which we all know ourselves in our heats, or only the whity-brown truth of the pericardium, or the nice, whitened truth of the shirtfront? Even you won't tell the black heart's-truth. The man who could do it would be famed to the last day the sun shown upon.

One learns people through the heart, not through the eyes or the intellect.

Australasian's custom of speaking of England as home. It was always pretty to hear it, and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and made one seem to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother England's old gray head.

There was no Pacific railroad in those fine times of ten or twelve years ago—not a single rail of it. I only proposed to stay in Nevada three months—I had no thought of staying longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and strange, and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would not see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven uncommonly long years!