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
becomes grounded moment wisdom
Wit, by itself, is of little account. It becomes a moment only when grounded on wisdom.
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?
acts himself known led life none wee
What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself
benefit ourselves whose
We do no benevolences whose first benefit is not for ourselves
barely good whiskey
Too much of anything is bad, but too much of good whiskey is barely enough.
birth grieve involved rejoice
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved
gets heaps moralist political questions trouble
Yes, you are right - I am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps of trouble when I go thrashing around in political questions
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.