Mark Twain

“We had a little slave boy whom we had hired from some one, there in Hannibal. He was from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and had been brought away from his family and his friends, half way across the American continent, and sold. He was a cheery spirit, innocent and gentle, and the noisiest creature that ever was, perhaps. All day long he was singing, whistling, yelling, whooping, laughing - it was maddening, devastating, unendurable. At last, one day, I lost all my temper, and went raging to my mother, and said Sandy had been singing for an hour without a single break, and I couldn't stand it, and wouldn't she please shut him up.The tears came into her eyes, and her lip trembled, and she said something like this - 'Poor thing, when he sings, it shows that he is not remembering, and that comforts me; but when he is still, I am afraid he is thinking, and I cannot bear it. He will never see his mother again; if he can sing, I must not hinder it, but be thankful for it. If you were older, you would understand me; then that friendless child's noise would make you glad.' It was a simple speech, and made up of small words, but it went home, and Sandy's noise was not a trouble to me any more.”

“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. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.”

“I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, again. It's the sure way, and the only sure way;”

“It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.”

“There are times when I would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.”

“A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.”

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.”

“great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.”

“Dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the thing. Pictures can make dates stick.”

“If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.”

“It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened.”

“I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.”

“whenever the literary german dives into a sentence, this is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”

“A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.”

“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”

“A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?”

“Be good and you will be lonesome.”

“In the country neighbor­hood thereabouts, along the dusty roads, one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy, and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight-sign that these were deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disap­pointed families who could neither sell them nor give them away.”

“Satan hasn't a single salaried helper; the Opposition employs a million.”

“I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.”

“Don't go around thinking the world owes you a living. It was here first.”

“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.”

“At noon I observed a bevy of nude young native women bathing in the sea, and I went and sat down on there clothes to keep them from being stolen.”

“One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a women is, until after considerable acquaintance with her.”

“To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?”

“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.”

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

“Each man's preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him.”

“There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.”

“Being made merely in the image of God but not otherwise resembling him enough to be mistaken by anybody but a very near sighted person.”

“The Mississippi River towns are comely, clean, well built, and pleasing to the eye, and cheering to the spirit. The Mississippi Valley is as reposeful as a dreamland, nothing worldly about it . . . nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon.”

“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”

“It is higher and nobler to be kind.”

“He was endowed with a stupidity which by the least little stretch would go around the globe four times and tie.”

“You can't throw too much style into a miracle.”

“The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world'd luxuries, king by grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented.”

“There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.”

“If books are not good company, where shall I find it?”

“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

“Man - a figment of God's imagination.”

“The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn't detect.”

“The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.”

“If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.”

“How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.”

“I do not like work even when someone else is doing it.”

“It is easier to stay out than to get out.”

“The history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.”

“Distance lends enchantment to the view.”