It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-- Mark Twain
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-- Mark Twain
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion
that makes horse-races.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything.
Some think it is the voice of God.
-- Mark Twain
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.
-- Mark Twain
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
-- Mark Twain
No group of professionals meets except to conspire against the public at large.
-- Mark Twain
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles
as if she laid an asteroid.
-- Mark Twain
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
-- Mark Twain
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
October 12, the Discovery.
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss
it.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
October.
This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in.
The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June,
December, August, and February.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting
to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author
-- Mark Twain, "Tom Sawyer"
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
Congress. But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain
Remark of Dr. Baldwin's concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat toadstools
that think they are truffles.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
-- Mark Twain
Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more
deadly in the long run.
-- Mark Twain
Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he
will not bite you. This is the principal difference between
a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and
enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to
lend money.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
procession but carrying a banner.
-- Mark Twain
The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that
will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
-- Mark Twain
The Public is merely a multiplied "me."
-- Mark Twain
The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
-- Mark Twain
The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with
commoner things. It is chief of the world's luxuries, king by the grace of God
over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the
angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because
she repented.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
-- Mark Twain
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.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
-- Mark Twain
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners
always spell better than they pronounce.
-- Mark Twain
Too much is just enough.
-- Mark Twain, on whiskey