Mark Twain, Собрание сочинений в восьми томах Quotes

Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

What a good thing Adam had - when he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man.

The Creator made Italy with designs by Michelangelo.

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.

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.

In certain trying circumstances urgent circumstances desperate circumstances profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.

Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie-I found that out.

We are chameleons and our partialities and prejudices change places with an easy and blessed facility.

Heaven goes by favor if it went by merit you would stay out and your dog would go in.

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me it's the parts that I do understand.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.

When we remember that we are all mad the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

There are several good protections against temptation but the surest is cowardice.

Adam was the only man who when he said a good thing knew that nobody had said it before him.

That kind of so-called housekeeping where they have six Bibles and no cork-screw.

Travel is fatal to prejudice bigotry and narrow-mindedness.

There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land again after a cheerful careless voyage.

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

I am opposed to millionaires but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

I wish to become rich so that I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little like those kind-hearted fat benevolent people do.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles but most of them never happened.

When I was younger I could remember anything whether it had happened or not.

T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.

T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow there is no humor in Heaven.

Words are only painted fire a look is the fire itself.

Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

I never smoke to excess - that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

I never let schooling interfere with my education.

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any.