Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyerand its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the latter often called "The Great American Novel"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 November 1835
CountryUnited States of America
art men self
As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!
men gossip enemy
He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.
hurt jam doe
when you recollect something which belonged in an earlier chapter, do not go back, but jam it in where you are . Discursiveness does not hurt an autobiography in the least.
opportunity thinking effort
I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out of all proportion to the European experience.
lying able historian
A historian who would convey the truth has got to lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.
inspirational optimistic men
The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
running educational long
I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.
school knowledge college
All schools, all colleges have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge.
hate humorous heart
I have never heard enough classical music to be able to enjoy it; & the simple truth is, I detest it. Not mildly, but will all my heart. To me an opera is the very climax & cap-stone of the absurd, the fantastic the unjustifiable. I hate the very name of opera - partly because of the nights of suffering I have endured in its presence, & partly because I want to love it and can't.
hurt spring fall
It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business.
taken cake bugs
Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant; and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy.
war famine hard
Every one knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere.
lying people society
I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct, nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying.
lying support bricks
The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples — that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.