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
brother years two
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.
vacancy world authority
from the beginning of my sojourn in this world there was a persistent vacancy in me where the industry ought to be. (Ought to was is better, perhaps, though the most of the authorities differ as to this.
jobs indulge-in ignorant
When grown-up persons indulge in practical jokes, the fact gauges them. They have lived narrow, obscure, and ignorant lives, and at full manhood they still retain and cherish a job lot of left-over standards and ideals that would have been discarded with their boyhood if they had then moved out into the world and a broader life.
europe turkeys russia
I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.
brooklyn half praise
Brooklyn praise is half slander.
masters guides subtlety
Guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke.
opportunity race losing
when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.
pity young
It is a pity we can't escape from life when we are young.
beautiful white race
Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare.
police trade plenty
A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty.
thinking clothes political
The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal, he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him: it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.
pride hands ideas
The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.
chickens
In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch.
laughing people church
I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church. They can't be made to do it in any possible way.