Mark Twain quotes - page 34

Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was alive. I wish they were used more. (Mark Twain)
Let us be grateful to Adam, our benefactor. He cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of labor. View quote
Mark Twain
Never tell a lie-except for practice. View quote
Mark Twain
I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide. View quote
Mark Twain
And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars all over Europe, all over the world. 'Sometimes in the private interest of royal families,' Satan said, 'sometimes to crush a weak nation but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose there is no such war in the history of the race. View quote
Mark Twain
An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency. View quote
Mark Twain
The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name. View quote
Mark Twain
It is no use to keep private information which you can't show off. View quote
Mark Twain
Experience of life (not of books) is the only capital usable in such a book as you have attempted one can make no judicious use of this capital while it is new. View quote
Mark Twain
It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient. View quote
Mark Twain
I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindu theology, ... but the difficulties were too great. (Mark Twain)
Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead. View quote
Mark Twain
It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent on him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not. View quote
Mark Twain
If men bore children, there would only be one born in each family. View quote
Mark Twain
It is our nature to conform it is a force which not many can successfully resist. What is its seat The inborn requirement of self-approval. View quote
Mark Twain
His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there's scarcely a hole in it anywhere. View quote
Mark Twain
Some civilized women would lose half their charm without dress and some would lose all of it. View quote
Mark Twain
There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself. View quote
Mark Twain
God's great cosmic joke on the human race was requiring that men and women live together in marriage. View quote
Mark Twain
It was the schoolboy who said, Faith is believing what you know ain't so. View quote
Mark Twain
But when the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface. (Mark Twain)
Therein lies the defect of revenge it's all in the anticipation the thing itself is a pain, not a pleasure at least the pain is the biggest end of it. View quote
Mark Twain
Intellectual work is misnamed it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. View quote
Mark Twain
I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world. View quote
Mark Twain
But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done. View quote
Mark Twain