Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature". Twain's novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel". He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) and cowrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. The novelist Ernest Hemingway claimed that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."

Quotes

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand.
Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.
It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake.
In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.
It could probably be show by facts and figures that there is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress.
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be - a Christian.
George Washington as a boy was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth - he could not even lie.
A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose.
I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.
The holy passion of Friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards
Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you: the one to slander you, and the other to bring the news to you.
There are times when one would like to end the whole human race, and finish the farce.
If you take a dog which is starving and feed him and make him prosperous, that dog will not bite you. This is the primary difference between a dog and a man.
I did not attend his funeral, but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved it.
When I think of the number of disagreeable people that I know who have gone to a better world, I am sure hell won't be so bad at all.

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