Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Quotes

• When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

• We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.

• When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

• The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

• Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

• Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds upon the heel that crushes it.

• The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.

• To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know, I've done it a thousand times.

• At the beginning of a great national change, the patriot is a scarce man: scorned, ridiculed and forgotten. When his cause succeeds, however, all men will join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

• By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's I mean.

• Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.

• If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmity of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind.

• Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.

• I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor.

• Those who say truth is stranger than fiction have wasted their time on poorly written fiction.

• The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong; he can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way.

• Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

• All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

• Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.