I have tried getting up early, and I have tried getting up late-and the latter agrees with me best.
Mark TwainThere are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe... the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.
Mark TwainThere are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
Mark TwainHeroine: Girl in a book who is saved from drowning by a hero and marries him next week, but if it was to be over again ten years later it is likely she would rather have a life-belt and he would rather have her have it. Hero: Person in a book who does things which he can't and girl marries him for it.
Mark TwainNever put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether. A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
Mark TwainA sin takes on a new and real terror when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out.
Mark TwainHe was endowed with a stupidity which by the least little stretch would go around the globe four times and tie.
Mark TwainI was standing in our dining-room thinking of nothing in particular, when a cablegram was put into my hand. It said, 'Susy was peacefully released today.' It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live.
Mark TwainLearn from the mistakes of others - you won't live long enough to make them all yourself. He's opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer him the position.
Mark TwainI thought tamarinds were made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, and it seemed to me that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my lips, till they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours. They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave them a 'wire edge' that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said 'no, it will come off when the enamel does' - which was comforting, at any rate. I found, afterward, that only strangers eat tamarinds - but they only eat them once.
Mark TwainA joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.
Mark TwainThe man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. It is said that leaders are readers. However if they read trashy magazines for the majority of their time and they never run with the information that they glean from resourceful books, then they may as well have not taken any time to read at all. It is easier to stay out than get out.
Mark TwainIt is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
Mark TwainAfter my marriage she edited everything I wrote. And what is more, she not only edited my works, she edited me.
Mark TwainNothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant; and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy.
Mark TwainBut it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it.
Mark TwainAstonishing things can be done with the human memory if you will devote it faithfully to one particular line of business.
Mark TwainThere's plenty of boys that will come hankering and gruvvelling around when you've got an apple, and beg the core off you; but when they're got one, and you beg for the core, and remind them how you give them a core one time, they take a mouth at you, and say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no core.
Mark TwainThe right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
Mark TwainI should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindu theology, ... but the difficulties were too great.
Mark TwainNone but an ass pays a compliment and asks a favour at the same time. There are many asses.
Mark TwainThere are two reasons why anybody buys anything. The real reason, and the reason they give you.
Mark TwainIt is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.
Mark TwainWhat is the chief end of man?-to get rich. In what way?-dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must.
Mark Twain