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
ignorant body knows
Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.
supposing-that guessing goes-on
Some things you can't find out; but you will never know you can't by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can't find out.
funny life death
I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
rivers water mexico
Until I came to New Mexico, I never realized how much beauty water adds to a river.
wedding flower sunshine
A marriage...makes of two fractional lives a whole; it gives to two purposeless lives a work, and doubles the strength of each to perform it; it gives to two questioning natures a reason for living, and something to live for; it will give a new gladness to the sunshine, a new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth, and a new mystery to life.
academy boots born capacity chance greatest happens heaven knew meet military napoleon people shining
Well, we can take you to meet Napoleon -- but he's shining the boots of the person who actually was the world's greatest military genius. He happens to have been a tinsmith from Pennsylvania who never had a chance to go to a military academy -- so he never even knew he was a great military genius. He was born with that capacity -- and only here in heaven do we actually know who these people are.
convict conviction known man people settled
When a man is known to have no settled convictions of his own he can't convict other people
learning trouble wages
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?
belief believing schoolboy
Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so
lightning thunder
Thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.
knowing loudest
The person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.
body promise surest
To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing
astonished boy father hardly ignorant learned man seven stand
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 by how much he'd learned in seven years.
boy building closed education farmer jail public river save schools spoke stopped time
When I was a boy on the Mississippi River there was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped building the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built.