The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.
Mark TwainI have never seen what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life. And yet-I am inclined to expect one.
Mark TwainEvery man feels that his experience is unlike that of anybody else and therefore he should write it down-- he finds also that everybody else has thought and felt on some points precisely as he has done, and therefore he should write it down.
Mark TwainBiographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
Mark TwainIt ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
Mark TwainBeautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: -- I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.
Mark Twain