Mark Twain: Trending quotes (page 16)

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“His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.”

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

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Idea , Time

“There is no such thing as an ordinary life.”

Mark Twain
Life

“As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.”

Mark Twain book Pudd'nhead Wilson

Source: Pudd'nhead Wilson

“The history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.”

Mark Twain
Truth , Lie , History

“The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.”

Mark Twain

Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

Joy

“When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.”

Mark Twain

“Those who don't read good books have no advantage over those who can't.”

Mark Twain

Variant: The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

Books , Reading

“To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Mark Twain

“[Citing a familiar "American joke":] In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?”

Mark Twain

"What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us?" http://www.mtwain.com/What_Paul_Bourget_Thinks_of_Us/0.html, in How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (1897)

Parent

“The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 130
Context: I have not read Nietzsche or Ibsen, nor any other philosopher, and have not needed to do it, and have not desired to do it; I have gone to the fountain-head for information—that is to say, to the human race. Every man is in his own person the whole human race, with not a detail lacking. I am the whole human race without a detail lacking; I have studied the human race with diligence and strong interest all these years in my own person; in myself I find in big or little proportion every quality and every defect that is findable in the mass of the race. I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed the heads of millions and millions of men before I was born; I knew I should not find a single original thought in any philosophy, and I knew I could not furnish one to the world myself, if I had five centuries to invent it in. Nietzsche published his book, and was at once pronounced crazy by the world—by a world which included tens of thousands of bright, sane men who believed exactly as Nietzsche believed, but concealed the fact, and scoffed at Nietzsche. What a coward every man is! and how surely he will find it out if he will just let other people alone and sit down and examine himself. The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

“Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first!"
Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“If a person offends you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance, and hit him with a brick.”

Mark Twain
Chance , Personality