Mark Twain

“It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.”

“The exquisitely bad is as satisfying to the soul as the exquisitely good. Only the mediocre is unendurable.”

“All say, ‘how hard it is that we have to die’ -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live.”

“You see, he was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and then. It was a several years' cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it.”

“Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.”

“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.”

“I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.”

“Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.”

“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

“Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for -- annually, not oftener -- if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.”

“Each place has its own advantages - heaven for the climate, and hell for the society.”

“Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought.”

“As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up of a vast array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her citizens to accomplish it. She is today one vast museum of magnificence and misery. All the churches in an ordinary American city put together could hardly buy the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathedrals. And for every beggar in America, Italy can show a hundred - and rags and vermin to match. It is the wretchedest, princeliest land on earth. Look at the grande Doumo of Florence - a vast pile that has been sapping the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly finished yet. Like all other men, I fell down and worshiped it, but when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking, too suggestive, and I said. "Oh, 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?”

“Cuando recordamos que todos somos locos, la vida queda explicada”

“Everybody lies...every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception.”

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”

“what is joy without sorrow? what is success without failure? what is a win without a loss? what is health without illness? you have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. there is always going to be suffering. it’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.”

“A dog is der Hund the dog; a women is die Frau the wom[an]; a horse is das Pferd, the horse; now you put that dog in the Genitive case, & is he the same dog he was before? No sir; he is das Hundes; put him in the Dative case & what is he? Why, he is dem Hund. Now you snatch him into the accusative case & how is it with him? Why he is den Hunden? ... Read moreBut suppose he happens to be twins & you have to pluralize him – what then? Why sir they’ll swap that twin dog around thro’ the four cases till he’ll think he’s an entire International Dog Show all in his own person. I don’t like dogs, but I wouldn’t treat a dog like that. I wouldn’t even treat a borrowed dog that way.”

“We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”

“If man could be crossed with a cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.”

“At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But, if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for duty's sake, and invincible determination, may hope to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat.”

“First get the facts, you can distort them later”

“Immer, wenn man beginnt die Meinung mit der Mehrheit zu teilen ist es Zeit sich zu besinnen,”

“The pause - that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, howsoever felicitous, could accomplish it.”

“When the Lord finished the world, he pronounced it good. That is what I said about my first work, too. But Time, I tell you, Time takes the confidence out of these incautious opinions. It is more than likely that He thinks about the world, now, pretty much as I think about the Innocents Abroad. The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.”

“As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.”

“The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.”

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

“I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well.”

“All kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out.”

“He had had much experience of physicians, and said 'the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not'.”

“Then the old man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of, and so called them what's-his-name, when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing.”

“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on.”

“If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.”

“There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.”

“Don't explain your author, read him right and he explains himself.”

“I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me.”

“Homely truth is unpalatable.”

“So I hove a brick through his window...”

“Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.”

“La gentillesse est le langage qu'un sourd peut entendre et une aveugle peut voir ”

“Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.”

“There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.”

“The average man don't like trouble and danger.”

“Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.”

“Man is a marvelous curiosity … he thinks he is the Creator’s pet … he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea?”

“Life should begin with age and it's privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and it's capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.”

“The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.”

“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.”

“There are some few people I respect and admire, but I don't think much of the species.”