Mark Twain quotes - page 15

Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs-the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest-you want them all to land in hell together, and right away. (Mark Twain)
Not a single right is indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses not a single permanent right. God is Might (and He is shifty, malicious, and uncertain). View quote
Mark Twain
...an Autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell...-the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences. View quote
Mark Twain
...I was born lazy. I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can't go beyond possibility. View quote
Mark Twain
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again! View quote
Mark Twain
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. View quote
Mark Twain
When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old. View quote
Mark Twain
Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink- under any circumstances. View quote
Mark Twain
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. View quote
Mark Twain
Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog. View quote
Mark Twain
We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles. (Mark Twain)
I 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. View quote
Mark Twain
We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation. View quote
Mark Twain
There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. View quote
Mark Twain
If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. View quote
Mark Twain
He says every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind if you want to see it. View quote
Mark Twain
That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do. View quote
Mark Twain
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging? View quote
Mark Twain
...my sister...was an interested and zealous invalid during sixty-five years, tried all the new diseases as fast as they came out, and always enjoyed the newest one more than any that went before; my brother had accumulated forty-two brands of Christianity before he was called away. View quote
Mark Twain
You can't reason with the heart it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns. View quote
Mark Twain
I couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn't think about nothing else. (Mark Twain)
What's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same. View quote
Mark Twain
There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory. View quote
Mark Twain
If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance. View quote
Mark Twain
Persons who think there is no such thing as luck-good or bad-are entitled to their opinion, although I think they ought to be shot for it. View quote
Mark Twain