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“The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers;”

Mark Twain

"Taming the Bicycle" (1917)

“For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.”

Mark Twain

Actual source: A letter to The Economist (16 January 1971), written by one M.J. Shields (or M.J. Yilz, by the end of the letter). The letter is quoted in full in one of Willard Espy's Words at Play books. This was a modified version of a piece "Meihem in ce Klasrum", published in the September 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j31/satires.php Misattributed

“I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. It is so distinctly a matter of feeling with me, and is so strong and so deeply-rooted in my make and constitution, that I am sure I could not even see a vivisector vivisected with anything more than a sort of qualified satisfaction.”

Mark Twain

Letter https://books.google.it/books?id=-rgnCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT370 to Sidney G. Trist, Editor of the Animals' Friend Magazine, in his capacity as Secretary of the London Anti-Vivisection Society (26 May 1899), in Mark Twain's Notebooks, ed. Carlo De Vito (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2015)

“Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Ch. 13 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-13.html A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

“The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds! You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. The railroads are good enough for me.”

Mark Twain

"The Danger of Lying in Bed" (1871)

“Honesty is the best policy — when there is money in it.”

Mark Twain

Speech to Eastman College (1901)

“A genius is not very likely to ever discover himself; neither is he very likely to be discovered by his intimates; in fact I think I may put it in stronger words and say it is impossible that a genius—at least a literary genius—can ever be discovered by his intimates; they are so close to him that he is out of focus to them and they can't get at his proportions; they cannot perceive that there is any considerable difference between his bulk and their own. They can't get a perspective on him, and it is only by a perspective that the difference between him and the rest of their limited circle can be perceived. St. Peter's cannot be impressive for size to a person who has always seen it close at hand and has never been outside of Rome; it is only the stranger, approaching from far away in the Campania, who sees Rome as an indistinct and characterless blur, with the mighty cathedral standing up out of it all lonely and unfellowed in its majesty. Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered—either by themselves or by others. But for the Civil War, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman and Sheridan would not have been discovered, nor have risen into notice.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), pp. 57–58

“None but the dead have free speech.”

Mark Twain

Source: Mark Twain's Notebook (1935), p. 393

“A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.”

Mark Twain

More Tramps Abroad (1897)

“He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.”

Mark Twain

"Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington", The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches http://books.google.com/books?id=kqMDAAAAQAAJ (1867), ed. John Paul Cited by: William E. Phipps, Mark Twain's Religion https://books.google.nl/books?id=y8e2zLpDngQC&pg=PA18&dq=%22+He+was+ignorant+of+the+commonest+accomplishments+of+youth.+He+could+not+even+lie%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVpM31tsbMAhXFshQKHZ32Ci0Q6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=%22%20He%20was%20ignorant%20of%20the%20commonest%20accomplishments%20of%20youth.%20He%20could%20not%20even%20lie%22&f=false, Mercer University Press, 2003, p. 18 Richard Locke, Critical Children: The Use of Childhood in Ten Great Novels https://books.google.nl/books?id=38erAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA12&dq=%22+He+was+ignorant+of+the+commonest+accomplishments+of+youth.+He+could+not+even+lie%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVpM31tsbMAhXFshQKHZ32Ci0Q6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=%22%20He%20was%20ignorant%20of%20the%20commonest%20accomplishments%20of%20youth.%20He%20could%20not%20even%20lie%22&f=false, Columbia University Press, p. 12

“Virtue never has been as respectable as money.”

Mark Twain book The Innocents Abroad

Ch. 54 http://books.google.com/books?id=XX-wAAAAIAAJ&q=&quot;Virtue+never+has+been+as+respectable+as+money&quot;&pg=PA589#v=onepage The Innocents Abroad (1869)

“Mr. Roosevelt is the most formidable disaster that has befallen the country since the Civil War—but the vast mass of the nation loves him, is frantically fond of him, even idolizes him. This is the simple truth. It sounds like a libel upon the intelligence of the human race, but it isn't; there isn't any way to libel the intelligence of the human race.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 136, of President Theodore Roosevelt

“The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.”

Mark Twain

Vol. II, p. 69
Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

“NOTICE. To the next Burglar. There is nothing but plated ware in this house, now and henceforth. You will find it in that brass thing in the dining room over in the corner by the basket of kittens. If you want the basket, put the kittens in the brass thing. Do not make a noise—it disturbs the family. You will find rubbers in the front hall, by that thing which has the umbrellas in it, chiffonier, I think they call it, or pergola, or something like that. Please close the door when you go away. Very truly yours, S. L. Clemens”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 269

“Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. LIX
Following the Equator (1897)

“This poor little one-horse town.”

Mark Twain

"The Undertaker's Chat", first published as "A Reminiscence of the Back Settlements" in The Galaxy, Vol. 10, No. 5, November 1870 http://books.google.com/books?id=2TIZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA731. Anthologized in Mark Twain's Sketches, New and Old‎ http://books.google.com/books?id=5LcIAAAAQAAJ (1875)

“We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.”

Mark Twain

Answering a toast, "To the Babies," at a banquet in honor of General U.S. Grant (November 14, 1879). The Writings of Mark Twain, Vol. 20 (1899), ed. Charles Dudley Warner, p. 397 http://books.google.com/books?id=mRARAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA397

“There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours.”

Mark Twain

New England Weather, speech to the New England Society (December 22, 1876)

“In this connection I call to mind Genesis, chapter xlvii…the pathetic story of the years of plenty and the years of famine in Egypt, and how Joseph, with that opportunity, made a corner in broken hearts, and the crusts of the poor, and human liberty--a corner whereby he took a nation's money all away, to the last penny…then took the nation itself, buying it for bread, man by man, woman by woman, child by child, till all were slaves…and it was a disaster so crushing that its effects have not wholly disappeared from Egypt to-day… Was Joseph establishing a character for his race which would survive long in Egypt? and in time would his name come to be familiarly used to express that character--like Shylock's? It is hardly to be doubted. Let us remember that this was centuries before the Crucifixion.”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

“I do not take any credit to my better-balanced head because I never went crazy on Presbyterianism. We go too slow for that. You never see us ranting and shouting and tearing up the ground, You never heard of a Presbyterian going crazy on religion. Notice us, and you will see how we do. We get up of a Sunday morning and put on the best harness we have got and trip cheerfully down town; we subside into solemnity and enter the church; we stand up and duck our heads and bear down on a hymn book propped on the pew in front when the minister prays; we stand up again while our hired choir are singing, and look in the hymn book and check off the verses to see that they don't shirk any of the stanzas; we sit silent and grave while the minister is preaching, and count the waterfalls and bonnets furtively, and catch flies; we grab our hats and bonnets when the benediction is begun; when it is finished, we shove, so to speak. No frenzy, no fanaticism --no skirmishing; everything perfectly serene. You never see any of us Presbyterians getting in a sweat about religion and trying to massacre the neighbors. Let us all be content with the tried and safe old regular religions, and take no chances on wildcat.”

Mark Twain

"The New Wildcat Religion"