Mark Twain, Собрание сочинений в восьми томах Quotes

The report of my illness grew out of his (James Clemens) illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration.

If one is honest there is no need to remember.

He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person.

There is no salvation for us but to adopt Civilization and lift ourselves down to its level.

My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses and hypocrisies.

I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.

If there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out; and I don't know but more so.

Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized.

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.

Oh Death where is thy sting! It has none. But life has.

...there isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting.

I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an unfamiliar opera.

It's so damned humiliating.

A healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any occupation.

It is my custom to keep on talking until I get the audience cowed.

Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is wrong. There is no other time.

In prayer we call ourselves 'worms of the dust', but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par.

the rumors of the White Sox demise are greatly exaggerated.

Was it my conspicuousness that distressed me? Not at all. It was merely that I was not beautifully conspicuous but uglily conspicuous - it makes all the difference in the world.

It is not in the least likely that any life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgment of the person who lived it.

A good and wholesome thing is a little harmless fun in this world; it tones a body up and keeps him human and prevents him from souring.

A man may plan as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician circumstance steps in and takes the matter off his hands.

No, I have no desire for riches. Honest poverty and a conscience, torpid through virtuous inaction, are more to me than corner lots and praise.

They spell it da Vinci and pronounce it da Vinchy. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

Every generalization is dangerous, especially this one.

The highest pleasure to be got out of freedom, and having nothing to do, is labor.

I have only one moral precept; never smoke more than five cigars at a time.

The educated Southerner has no use for an 'r', except at the beginning of a word.

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.

Germany, the diseased world's bathhouse.

Had double chins all the way down to his stomach.

Grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in.

Few of us stand prosperity; another man's I mean.

The law of work does seem utterly unfair-but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, too.

There was never a century nor a country that was short of experts who knew the Deity's mind and were willing to reveal it.

The English are mentioned in the Bible; Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Can it be possible that the painters make John the Baptist a Spaniard in Madrid and an Irishman in Dublin?

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom when he can no longer be led by the nose.

The poetry is all in the anticipation, for there is none in reality.

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, political, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies.

Between believing a thing and thinking you KNOW is only a small step and quickly taken.

A man may have no bad habits and have worse

There is nothing that saps one's confidence as the knowing how to do a thing

Chastity - you can carry it too far.

The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes, but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind.

Delicacy - a sad, sad false delicacy - robs literature of the two best things among its belongings: Family-circle narratives & obscene stories.

...mastery of the art and spirit of the Germanic language enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.

A dream...I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit.

...the circumstances and the atmosphere always have so much to do in directing a conversation, especially a German conversation, which is only a kind of an insurrection, anyway.

I would not rob you of your food or your clothes or your umbrella, but if I caught your German out I would take it. But I don't study any more,- I have given it up.