No child should be permitted to grow up without exercise for imagination. It enriches life for him. It makes things wonderful and beautiful.
Mark TwainMissionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All you had to do was to cure the head savageยดs sick daughter by a miracle- a miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance- and immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes with a new convertยดs enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself easy now. He would take the ax and convert the rest of the nation himself.
Mark TwainThat reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very first official thing I did, in my administration-and it was on the first day of it, too-was to start a patent office; for I knew that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways or backways.
Mark TwainEducation: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.
Mark TwainThere was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery texts in the Bible remained; the practice changed; that was all.
Mark Twain