Quotes About Mark Twain

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

I'm a big John Steinbeck fan. Cormac McCarthy. I've always loved the stories of regular people. Mark Twain, too. When you look back at some of the epic writers of our country's history, very rarely do you find upper-class royalty. We seem to delve into the struggle of life and the labor of life much more frequently.

Clemens's loss was literature's gain. Forced to earn his daily bread once more, he turned to mining in the Mother Lode country. He found little gold, but gathered impressions and experiences. He met Bret Harte, and guessed that if Harte could make money from stories about the gold country, so could he. He proved himself right with a tale about a jumping-frog contest in Calaveras County, which won him a wide and enthusiastic national readership.

Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death.

There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land again after a cheerful careless voyage.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.

I fell in love with the most cordial and sociable city in the Union.

Mark Twain is a voice of truth and a voice of equality and a voice of tolerance. Which means he is a voice of love.

I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I'd lay my cards down on that, and say that it's that that I'm trying to do.

Hartford had the Mark Twain Masquers, which was fantastic. They had been in business I don't know how many years. They knew how to build sets and sell tickets and put on a play. My day started at night. When I left the office, that's when my day began.

An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth a fact that is recognized by the law of libel .

Those who say truth is stranger than fiction have wasted their time on poorly written fiction.

the cathedral-like Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, which Mark Twain found so enchanting that he declared he would happily live in it for the rest of his life. It is still probably the most beautiful shopping center in the world.

As became a young sinner, Sam [Mark Twain] had a special interest in Satan. He asked his Sunday school teacher questions about Eve in the garden, wondering "if he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a serpent, would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber." Twain recalled, "He did not answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my age and comprehension.

An average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain.

As Mark Twain said, 'I love Wagner -- if only they'd cut out all that damned singing!'

Proto-postmodernist story of a habitual gambler and his bested frog. The plot isn't much, but it's worth reading because of the fun Twain has with narrative authority. (In reading Twain, I often suspect he is having more fun than I am.)

In reading Twain, I often suspect he is having more fun than I am.)

His arrival at the Alamo is one of history's great juxtapositional flukes, as if Teddy Roosevelt or Mark Twain had darted onto the Titanic at the last minute. The man and the place had almost nothing to do with each other, yet their stories would now be forever intertwined.

A dream...I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit.

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority for any town?

We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.

I bought a book of Mark Twain quotes. That's about my speed. I'll read a couple quotes and put it down.

The best stories in our culture have some sort of subversiveness - Mark Twain, 'Catcher in the Rye.' You provide kids with great stories and teach them how to use the tools to make their own.