Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)
Better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, novelist, writer, and lecturer.
I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.
I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.
I've never killed a man, but I've read many an obituary with a great deal of satisfaction.
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India.
Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. By forever, I mean thirty years.
Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.
At long intervals he drew his thumb along the edge of his knife, and nodded his head with satisfaction. "It grows sharper," he said; "yes, it grows sharper."
... "It was his father that did it all. I am but an archangel; but for him I should be pope!"
The King stirred. The hermit sprang noiselessly to the bedside, and went down upon his knees, bending over the prostrate form with his knife uplifted. The boy stirred again; his eyes came open for an instant, but there was no speculation in them, they saw nothing; the next moment his tranquil breathing showed that his sleep was sound once more.
It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before.
In the cotton States, after the war...the Jew came down in force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share of the present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him.
Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? [...] Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.
Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
They spell it "Vinci" and pronounce it "Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.
Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we".
...[H]eaven for climate, Hell for society.
Only laughter can blow [a colossal humbug] to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Irreverence is the champion of liberty, if not its only defender.
Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh no.