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
capture form simplest
If I can capture truth in its simplest form, beauty will follow like a sledgehammer.
bigotry
Travel is fatal to bigotry.
beauty beautiful sight
We can't always have the beautiful aspect of things. Let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others go
boys towns small-town
In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy, everybody was poor, but didn't know it; and everybody was comfortable and did know it.
horse women ambition
Every man has a secret ambition: To outsmart horses, fish and women.
wisdom may unexamined-life
The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.
beautiful wisdom true-wisdom
If true, rarely beautiful. If beautiful, rarely true.
rome thrill charm
What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me? What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others? What can I discover?--Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here.
father boys broken
My father and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy--a sort of armed neutrality, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between us--which is to say, my father did the breaking, and I did the suffering.
wise boys men
Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity-- Early to bed and early to rise Make a man healthy and wealth and wise. As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.
attitude war advice
A private should preserve a respectful attitude toward his superiors, and should seldom or never proceed so far as to offer suggestions to his general in the field. If the battle is not being conducted to suit him, it is better for him to resign. By the etiquette of war, it is permitted to none below the rank of newspaper correspondent to dictate to the general in the field.
lonely new-york race
I have at last, after several months' experience, made up my mind that [New York] is a splendid desert--a domed and steepled solitude, where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race.
breathing luck want
The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede.
vain made
Nothing is made in vain, but the fly came near it.