The ordinary chestnut can beget a sickly and reluctant laugh, but it takes a horse chestnut to fetch the gorgeous big horse-laugh.
Mark TwainYou take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear.
Mark TwainThe time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.
Mark TwainWe all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.
Mark TwainWit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
Mark TwainThe gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it.
Mark TwainBiographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
Mark TwainWe do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we are apt to dissipate to excess.
Mark TwainThere are things which some people never attempt during their whole lives, but one of these is not poetry. Poetry attacks all human beings sooner or later, and, like the measles, is mild or violent according to the age of the sufferer.
Mark TwainHotels are the only proper places for lecturers. When I am ill-natured I so enjoy the freedom of a hotel where I can ring up a domestic and give him a quarter and then break furniture over him.
Mark TwainIf we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.
Mark TwainThe timid man yearns for full value and demands a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.
Mark TwainI am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
Mark TwainDon't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark TwainSeasickness: at first you are so sick you are afraid you will die, and then you are so sick you are afraid you won't die.
Mark TwainThe highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.
Mark TwainA dream...I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit.
Mark TwainIt liberates the vandal to travel-you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction.
Mark TwainNote that venerable proverb: Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain: adults and wise persons never speak it.
Mark TwainA man accustomed to American food and American domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe, but I think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die.
Mark TwainFrom his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one -- to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF.
Mark TwainAn occultation of Venus is not half so difficult as an eclipse of the sun, but because it comes seldom the world thinks it's a grand thing.
Mark TwainNo child should be permitted to grow up without exercise for imagination. It enriches life for him. It makes things wonderful and beautiful.
Mark TwainWriting is the easiest thing in the world.... Just try it sometime. I sit up with a pipe in my mouth and a board on my knees and I scribble away.
Mark TwainAll war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.
Mark TwainNow what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.
Mark TwainOurs is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.
Mark TwainI can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.
Mark TwainNo man has an appreciation so various that his judgment is good upon all varieties of literary work.
Mark TwainThe xmas holidays have this high value: that they remind Forgetters of the Forgotten, & repair damaged relationships.
Mark Twain