Quotes from Mark Twain

the dollar their god, how to get it their religion.

I apologize for the length of this letter. If I had had more time, it would have been shorter.

Great books are weighted and measured by their style and matter, and not the trimmings and shadings of their grammar.

O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob your church?

They have a grand mausoleum in Florence, which they built to bury our Lord and Saviour and the Medici family in.

The tomb of Adam! How touching it was, here in a land of strangers, far away from home, and friends, and all who cared for me, thus to discover the grave of a blood relation.

Among other common lies, we have the _silent_ lie--the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they _speak_ no lie, they lie not at all.

for "afternoon"] and I'll just be obleeged to make him work, to-morrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I've GOT

There's only one way to be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it just like A B C.' That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was never loaded with anything but blank cartridges.

Bilinç, insan?n iyiliÄŸine kar?? kay?ts?zd?r: kendi arzular?n? doyurmak haricinde hiçbir ÅŸeyle ilgilenmez. Ä°nsan?n iyiliÄŸine yönelik ÅŸeyleri tercih etmesi için eÄŸitilebilir, ama onlar? yaln?zca kendisini diÄŸer ÅŸeylere k?yasla daha memnun edeceÄŸi için tercih edecektir.

At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands—a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.

Well, the priest did very well, considering.  He got in all the details, and that is a good thing in a local item:  you see, he had kept books for the undertaker-department of his church when he was younger, and there, you know, the money's in the details; the more details, the more swag:

The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done.

In Rome, people with fine sympathetic natures stand up and weep in front of the celebrated 'Beatrice Cenci the Day before her Execution.' It shows what a label can do. If they did not know the picture, they would inspect it unmoved, and say, 'Young girl with hay fever; young girl with her head in a bag.

Hi-YI! YOU'RE up a stump, ain't you!

We had a succession of black nights, going up the river, and it was observable that whenever we landed, and suddenly inundated the trees with the intense sunburst of the electric light, a certain curious effect was always produced: hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from the masses of shining green foliage, and went careering hither and thither through the white rays, and often a song-bird tuned up and fell to singing.

heir did go to America, with the Fairfax heir or about the same time—but disappeared—somewhere in the wilds of Virginia, got married, end began to breed savages for the Claimant

When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn't say it.

When did the r disappear from Southern speech, and how did it come to disappear? The custom of dropping it was not borrowed from the North, nor inherited from England.

Of course, there are many rich men in the empire, but their money is buried, and they dress in rags and counterfeit poverty.

Der einzige Mensch, der sich vernünftig verhält, ist mein Schneider. Er nimmt jedes mal Maß, wenn er mich sieht, während alle anderen immer wieder die alten Maßstäbe anlegen.

f?g?duiala de a nu face un lucru este calea cea mai sigur? pentru a fi mereu ispitit s?-l faci.

One is often surprised at the juvenilities which grown people indulge in at sea, and the interest they take in them, and the consuming enjoyment they get out of them.

But there are some infelicities. Such as 'like' for 'as,' and the addition of an 'at' where it isn't needed. I heard an educated gentleman say, 'Like the flag-officer did.' His cook or his butler would have said, 'Like the flag-officer done.' You hear gentlemen say, 'Where have you been at?