The Quotable Mark Twain
Edited by Scott Douglas
The Quotable mark Twain
Copyright © 2009 by Scott Douglas
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Scott Douglas
Published 2009 by Douglas Editions
Smashwords Edition 1.0, October 2009
Age
Wrinkles should merely
indicate where the smiles have been.
- Following the Equator
Whatever a man's age,
he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in
his button-hole.
- The American Claimant
I saw men whom thirty
years had changed but slightly; but their wives had grown old. These
were good women; it is very wearing to be good.
- Life on the
Mississippi
They are always on deck
when there is a miracle to the fore--so as to get up in the picture,
perhaps. Angels are as fond of that as a fire company; look at the
old masters.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
I have been on the
verge of being an angel all my life, but it's never happened yet.
-
Mark Twain's Autobiography
Animals
A home without a
cat--and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat--may be a
perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
- Pudd'nhead
Wilson
On the 22d of June he
sold his dog--said 'Dern a dog, anyway, where you're just starting
off on a rattling bully pleasure tramp through the summer woods and
hills--perfect nuisance--chases the squirrels, barks at everything,
goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords--man can't get
any chance to reflect and enjoy nature--and I'd a blamed sight ruther
carry the claim myself, it's a mighty sight safer; a dog's mighty
uncertain in a financial way--always noticed it-- . . .
- A
Tramp Abroad
You may say a cat uses
good grammar. Well, a cat does -- but you let a cat get excited once;
you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights,
and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant
people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so
aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.
-
A Tramp Abroad
One of the most
striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only
nine lives.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
Answers
I was gratified to be
able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
-
Life on the Mississippi
Arguing
Arguments have no
chance against petrified training; they wear it as little as the
waves wear a cliff.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court
Beauty
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.
- A Tramp Abroad
One frequently only
finds out how really beautiful a really beautiful woman is after
considerable acquaintance with her; and the rule applies to Niagara
Falls, to majestic mountains, and to mosques--especially to
mosques.
- Innocents Abroad
One is apt to
overestimate beauty when it is rare.
- Innocents Abroad
Books
When I am king, they
shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of
books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.
-
The Prince and the Pauper
Boys and Girls
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.
- The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer
Now and then we had a
hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be
pirates.
-
Life on the Mississippi
The average American
girl possesses the valuable qualities of naturalness, honesty, and
inoffensive straightforwardness; she is nearly barren of troublesome
conventions and artificialities; consequently, her presence and her
ways are unembarrassing, and one is acquainted with her and on the
pleasantest terms with her before he knows how it came about.
-
The American Claimant
Business
Prosperity is the best
protector of principle.
- Following the Equator
Change
Change is the
handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.
- Roughing
It
Character
There is no character,
howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule,
howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his
character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the
humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of
feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in
doubt.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
Children
The darling
mispronunciations of childhood!--dear me, there's no music that can
touch it; and how one grieves when it wastes away and dissolves into
correctness, knowing it will never visit his bereaved ear again.
-
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The proverb says that
Providence protects children and idiots. This is really true. I know
because I have tested it.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
Children have but
little charity for one another's defects.
- Autobiography of
Mark Twain
Christianity
You can never find a
Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this saving
knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient
"people say." In all my seventy-two years and a half I have
never come across such another ass as this human race is.
-
Mark Twain's Autobiography
The church is
always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad
idea to reform itself a little, by way of example.
- A Tramp
Abroad
Concentration of power in a political machine
is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was
invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is
an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better
do in a split-up and scattered condition.
- A Connecticut Yankee
in King Arthur's Court
Civilization
There is a great
difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up
their finer feelings in an inquisition. One is the system of degraded
barbarians, the other of enlightened civilized people.
- The
Innocents Abroad
There are many humorous
things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he less
savage than the other savages.
- Following the Equator
Comfort
Night doesn't last
always; day has got to break some time or other. Every silver lining
has a cloud behind it, as the poet says; and that remark has always
cheered me, though I never could see any meaning to it. Everybody
uses it, though, and everybody gets comfort out of it.
- The
Gilded Age
As for me, give me
comfort first, and style afterwards.
- A Connecticut Yankee in
King Arthur's Court
Compliment
The happy phrasing of a
compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts and the happy delivery
of it another.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
Conceit
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.
- The Innocents Abroad
Conscience
It takes up more room
than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good
nohow.
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Conscience, man's moral
medicine chest.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
Conversation
He had a good memory,
and a tongue tied in the middle. This a combination which gives
immortality to conversation.
- Roughing It
Country
My kind of loyalty was
loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its
officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing,
the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and
be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing,
and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable,
cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.
- A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Criticism
I like criticism, but
it must be my way.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
I believe that the
trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most
degraded of all trades, and that it has no real value--certainly no
large value...However, let it go. It is the will of God that we must
have critics, and missionaries, and congressmen, and humorists, and
we must bear the burden.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
One mustn't criticize
other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself.
-
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Cruelty
Of all the creatures
that were made, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is
the only one--the solitary one--that possesses malice. That is the
basest of all instincts, passions, vices--the most hateful. He is the
only creature that has pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.
Also--in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty
mind.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
Custom
There isn't anything
you can't stand, if you are only born and bred to it.
- A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Often the less there is
to justify a traditional custom the harder it is to get rid it.
-
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
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.
-
Following the Equator
Death
Pity is for the living,
envy is for the dead.
- Following the Equator
Why is it that we
rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not
the person involved.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
In order to know a
community, one must observe the style of its funerals and know what
manner of men they bury with most ceremony.
- Roughing It
Democracy
We adore titles and
heredities in our hearts and ridicule them with our mouths. This is
our democratic privilege.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
Men write many fine and
plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that
where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible.
-
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Desire
He had discovered a
great law of human action, without knowing it--namely, in order to
make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the
thing difficult to attain.
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
A human being has a
natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.
-
Following the Equator
Disappointment
One cannot have
everything the way he would like it. A man has no business to be
depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind
to get even.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Discovery
In our day we don't
allow a hundred and thirty years to elapse between glimpses of a
marvel. If somebody should discover a creek in the county next to the
one that the North Pole is in, Europe and America would start fifteen
costly expeditions thither; one to explore the creek, and the other
fourteen to hunt for each other.
- Life on the Mississippi
Emotion
And mind you, emotions
are among the toughest things in the world to manufacture out of
whole cloth; it is easier to manufacture seven facts than one
emotion.
- Life on the Mississippi
Enjoyment
When I'm playful I use
the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and
drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales. I scratch my head with the
lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder.
- Life on
the Mississippi
Environment
When a person is
accustomed to one hundred and thirty-eight in the shade, his ideas
about cold weather are not valuable.
- Following the Equator
Envy
Man will do many things
to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
-
Following the Equator
Equality
There are many humorous
things in the world: among them the white man's notion that he is
less savage than the other savages.
- Following the Equator
Evil
Everyone
is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
-
Following the Equator
Experience
War talk by men who
have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet
who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.
- Life on
the Mississippi
The most permanent
lessons in morals are those which come, not of booky teaching, but of
experience.
- A Tramp Abroad
Facts
How
empty is theory in the presence of fact!
- A Connecticut Yankee
in King Arthur's Court
For a forgotten fact is
news when it comes again.
- Following the Equator
The mere knowledge of a
fact is pale; but when you come to realize your fact, it takes on
color. It is all the difference between hearing of a man being
stabbed to the heart, and seeing it done.
- A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Always dress a fact in
tights, never in an ulster.
- Life on the Mississippi
Fashion
Their costumes, as to
architecture, were the latest fashion intensified; they were
rainbow-hued; they were hung with jewels--chiefly diamonds. It would
have been plain to any eye that it had cost something to upholster
these women.
- The Gilded Age
Fault
No one is willing to
acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive can be
found for the estrangement of his acquaintenances.
- The Gilded
Age
Fear
There
are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is
cowardice.
- Following the Equator
Food
Foreigners
cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we can enjoy theirs.
It is not strange; for tastes are made, not born. I might glorify my
bill of fare until I was tired; but afer all, the Scotchman would
shake his head, and say, "Where's your haggis?" and the
Fijan would sigh and say, "Where's your missionary?"
-
A Tramp Abroad
Only strangers eat tamarinds--but they only
eat them once.
- Roughing It
Sagebrush is a very
fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished failure. Nothing
can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his illegitimate child
the mule.
- Roughing It
Hain't we got all the
fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in
any town?
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
If
you send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don't tell them he's a
damned fool, they'll never find out.
- Life on the Mississippi
Gambling
It is sound judgment to
put on a bold face and ply your hand for a hundred times what it
worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to 'call', and you
roll in the chips.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court