Quotes from Mark Twain

You should have seen the wave go to pieces and scatter! This was a finer sight than the other one.

My pipe was ready and would have been lit, if I had not been lost in thinking

It is strong language, but true. None of us could _live_ with an habitual truthteller; but thank goodness none of us has to.

As the service proceeded, the clergyman drew such pictures of the graces, the winning ways, and the rare promise of the lost lads, that every soul there, thinking he recognized these pictures, felt a pang in remembering that he had persistently blinded himself to them, always before, and had as persistently seen only faults and flaws in the poor boys.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.

Più divento vecchio, più vividamente ricordo cose che non sono avvenute.

Smiley always came out a winner on that pup, till he bet on a dog once that didn't have no rear legs, because they'd been sawed off in a circular saw accident. When the fight had gone along far

And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.

Susan bathing, surprised by the two old man. In the background the lapidation of the condemned. (Lapidation is good; it is much more elegant than stoning.) St.

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.

Pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; I didn't want to see him no more. He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around.

and they come without any inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances made sacred by long descent.

will say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religious. Nothing could divert them from the regular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the Church. More

I will say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religious. Nothing could divert them from the regular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the Church.

Non è bello che tutti si debba pensare allo stesso modo, è la differenza di opinioni quella che rende possibili le corse dei cavalli.

I]n order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain... Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and... Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

she was as welcome as a corpse is to a coroner.

Now the thing for YOU to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole.  If any real lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion;

Henry, I'm ashamed of you. You don't half thank the good gentleman. May I do it for you?' -Indeed you shall, dear, if you can improve it. Let us see you try. She walked to my man, got up in his lap, put her arm round his neck, and kissed him right on the mouth. Then the two old gentlemen shouted with laughter, but I was dumfounded, just petrified, as you may say.

If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.

Cuando llegaban es como si hubiese llegado el señor del universo, aportando con él todas las magnificencias de los reinos del mismo; y cuando se marchaban, dejaban tras ellos un sosiego que se parecía mucho al sueño profundo que se produce después de una orgía.

We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage the platform-business as far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all the way, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon and British Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week of smoke at the seaboard, where we were obliged to wait awhile for our ship. She had been getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be docked and repaired.

Only two things we'll regret on deathbed – that we are a little loved and little traveled.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up. But