Mark Twain

“You meet people who forget you. You forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can't forget. Those are your 'friends”

“We recognize that there are no trivial occurrences in life if we get the right focus on them.”

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”

“There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle afer cycle, by force and bloodshed.”

“What's your name?" "Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer." "That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me Tom, will you?" "Yes”

“But as soon as one is at rest in this world off he goes on something else to worry about.”

“You can't pray a lie -- I found that out.”

“Conformity—the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority.”

“I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.”

“It seems a pity that the world should throw away so many good things merely because they are unwholesome. I doubt if God has given us any refreshment which taken in moderation is unwholesome except microbes. Yet there are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable drinkable and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is it is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.”

“If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.”

“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”

“Vergangenheit ist, wenn es nicht mehr weh tut.”

“If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.”

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

“You can't pray a lie" Huck Finn”

“The idea of you lynching anybody! It's amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man's safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind - as long as it's day-time and you're not behind him.”

“El perdón es la fragancia que la violeta suelta cuando se levanta el zapato que la aplastó.”

“Cada vez que se encuentre usted del lado de la mayoría, es tiempo de hacer una pausa y reflexionar.”

“Certainly. Of course. That’s part of it. And always coming to school or when we’re going home, you’re to walk with me, when there ain’t anybody looking – and you choose me and I choose you at parties, because that’s the way you do when you’re engaged.”

“Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.”

“Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood.”

“I know now that all that glitters is not gold... However, I still go underrating men of gold, and glorifying men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.”

“The coat of arms of the human race ought to consist of a man with an axe on his shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone. Or, it ought to represent the several members of the human race holding out the hat to each other. For we are all beggars. Each in his own way. One beggar is too proud to beg for pennies but will beg a loan of dollars, knowing he can’t repay; another will not beg a loan but will beg for a postmastership; another will not do that but will beg for an introduction to “society”; one, being rich, will not beg a hod of coal of the railway company but will beg a pass; his neighbor will not beg coal, nor pass, but in social converse with a lawyer will place before him a supposititious case in the hope of getting an opinion out of him for nothing; one who would disdain to beg for any of these things will beg frankly for the presidency. None of the lot is ashamed of himself, but he despises the rest of the mendicants. Each admires his own dignity, and carefully guards it, but in his opinion the others haven’t any.”

“Human nature is all alike.”

“The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is--a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness.”

“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”

“Wherever he found his speech growing too modern -- which was about every sentence or two -- he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.”

“How empty is theory in the presence of fact!”

“I don't like to commit myself about Heaven and Hell, you see, I have friends in both places.”

“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”

“Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today!”

“There is no such thing as an ordinary life.”

“And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effect: it had intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold.”

“A fully belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”

“Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”

“We must take things as we find them in this world.”

“Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.”

“I saw a startling sight today, a politician with his hands in his own pockets.”

“Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.”

“Eventually, I sickened of people, myself included, who didn't think enough of themselves to make something of themselves- people who did only what they had to and never what they could have done. I learned from them the infected loneliness that comes at the end of every misspent day. I knew I could do better.”

“Ah, Antonio, it IS the noblest sport that ever was. I would give a year of my life to see it. Is the bull always killed?"   "Yes. Sometimes a bull is timid, finding himself in so strange a place, and he stands trembling, or tries to retreat. Then everybody despises him for his cowardice and wants him punished and made ridiculous; so they hough him from behind, and it is the funniest thing in the world to see him hobbling around on his severed legs; the whole vast house goes into hurricanes of laughter over it; I have laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks to see it. When he has furnished...”

“Yes, I am of old family, and not illiterate. I am a fossil."   "A which?"   "Fossil. The first horses were fossils. They date back two million years.”

“The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.”

“Wherefore, I beseech you let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I should but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself to see the desolation wrought.”

“Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.”

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”

“His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.”

“So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.”

“I have replaced his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction”