Mark Twain, Собрание сочинений в восьми томах Quotes

They do say that when a man starts down hill everybody is ready to help him with a kick, and I suppose it is so.

Do right and you will be conspicuous.

What marriage is to morality, a properly conducted licensed liquor traffic is to sobriety.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks- if we agree with him.

I've seen many troubles in my time, only half of which ever came true.

Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind it if you want to see it.

We were good boys, good Presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold.

Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people.

When the human race has once acquired a superstition, nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.

Love is madness, if thwarted it develops fast.

My heart goes out to anyone who is making his first appearance before an audience of human beings.

Who are we to create a heaven and hell for ourselves, excluding animals and plants in the bargain, just because we have the power to rationalize?

The miracle or the power that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application and perseverance under the promptings of a brave, determined spirit.

One must travel, to learn.

Don't live in the past, don't ponder about the future, stay at the PRESENT moment NOW...always.

You may say organize, organize, organize; but there may be so much organization that it will interfere with the work to be done.

It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail.

I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.

A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it's efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read-

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

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

In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.

Fleas can be taught nearly anything a congressman can.

I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

Women cannot receive even the most palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it; that is, married women.

I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.

I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.

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

Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.

The unspoken word is capital. We can invest it or we can squander it.

You cant reach old age by another man's road, my habits protect my life but they would assassinate you

If there is one thing that will make a man peculiarly and insufferable self-conceited, it is to have his stomach behave itself, the first day at sea, when nearly all his comrades are seasick.

Men are more compassionate/(nobler)/magnanimous/generous than God; for men forgive their dead, but God does not.

It is a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old.

I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

Senator: Person who makes laws in Washington when not doing time.

We regret the things we don't do more than the things we do.

Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else. This is not advice, it is merely custom.

Good judgment comes from experience. And where does experience come from? Experience comes from bad judgment.

I begin to see that a man's got to be in his own heaven to be happy.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow.

Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute-but they all worship money.

The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong. He can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way.

Troubles are only mental; it is the mind that manufactures them, and the mind can gorge them, banish them, abolish them.

If all the fools in this world should die, lordly God how lonely I should be.