Mark Twain, Собрание сочинений в восьми томах Quotes
We were surprised how closely the cuckoo imitated the clock-and yet, of course, it could never have heard a clock.
The human being places sexual intercourse above all other joys, but leaves it out of his heaven.
When a man arrives at great prosperity God did it: when he falls into disaster he did it himself.
The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is being attacked, and every man will be glad of these conscience-soothing falsities
The happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another.
Tell me about a person's family, friends, and community, and I'll tell you what his opinions are.
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.
Sum all the gifts that man is endowed with, and we give our greatest share of admiration to his energy. And today, if I were a heathen, I would rear a statue to Energy and fall down and worship it!
A new oath holds pretty well; but... when it is become old, and frayed out, and damaged by a dozen annual retryings of its remains, it ceases to be serviceable; any little strain will snap it.
If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loudly. Do not compound mispronunciation with inaudibility
You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist's custom.
There are women who have an indefinable charm in their faces which makes them beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty would fail.
No temperance society which is well officered and which has the real good of our fellow-men in view, will ever get drunk save in the seclusion of its temperance hall.
The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness--your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture....He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher.
When one's character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.
A good legible label is usually worth, for information, a ton of significant attitude and expression in a historical picture.
Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.
There's a good spot tucked away somewhere in everybody. You'll be a long time finding it, sometimes.
A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.
Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven & hell & I have only a vague curiosity about one of those.
You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,' but that ain't no matter. That book was made by a Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.
It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many can successfully resist. What is its seat? The inborn requirement of self-approval.
A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.
If the Christians of America could be persuaded to vote God and a clean ticket, it would bring about a moral revolution that would be incalculably beneficent. It would save the country.
One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it. They also believed the world was flat.
The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes.
If you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward. You will never get her full confidence again.
What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows - it must grow; nothing can prevent it.
It now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one...the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.
A man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first.
They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are gettin' ready to prove that a man's heirs ain't got any right to his property.