Mark Twain: Trending quotes (page 2)

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“This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 1 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3187/3187-h/3187-h.htm#link2H_4_0002
Christian Science (1907)

Family , Housing , Light , Mountain

“Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.”

Mark Twain book A Tramp Abroad

A Tramp Abroad (1880)
Context: You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does -- but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.

People , Cats , Thinking , Fight

“That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.”

Mark Twain book A Tramp Abroad

Source: A Tramp Abroad

“We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.”

Mark Twain book A Tramp Abroad

A Tramp Abroad (1880)

Feeling

“A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.”

Mark Twain book A Tramp Abroad

A Tramp Abroad (1880)

Learning , Personality

“Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these examples:

Freundschaftsbezeigungen.
Dilletantenaufdringlichkeiten.
Stadtverordnetenversammlungen.
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And they are not rare; one can open a German newspaper any time and see them marching majestically across the page,—and if he has any imagination he can see the banners and hear the music, too. They impart a martial thrill to the meekest subject. I take a great interest in these curiosities. "Whenever I come across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum. In this way I have made quite a valuable collection. When I get duplicates, I exchange with other collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here are some specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter:

Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen.
Alterthumswissenschaften.
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten.
Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen.
Wiederherstellungsbestrebungen.
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.
Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape,—but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it or tunnel through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help; but there is no help there. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere,—so it leaves this sort of words out. And it is right, because these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been killed.”

Mark Twain book A Tramp Abroad

A Tramp Abroad (1880)

Music , Way , Imagination , Mountain

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”

Mark Twain

Variant: Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

People , Stupidity

“Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.”

Mark Twain

“The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.”

Mark Twain

This appears on the opening placard of the film The Equalizer, attributing it to Twain, but there is no evidence that Twain wrote it. A precursor is found in Taylor Hartman's self-help book The Character Code (first published 1991), where it is not attributed to Twain: "The three most significant days in your life are: 1. The day you were born. 2. The day you find out why you were born. 3. The day you discover how to contribute the gift you were born to give" ( Google Books link https://books.google.com/books?id=gIKCxWxNmeMC&pg=PA147&dq=%22day+you+find+out+why%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijrJzc84vLAhUJzGMKHajvADEQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=%22day%20you%20find%20out%20why%22&f=false)
Disputed

Life , Motivational

“If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Notebook entry, January or February 1894, Mark Twain's Notebook, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine (1935), p. 240 http://books.google.com/books?id=DjBVlb7cBSIC&pg=PA240
Variant: If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!
Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Truth

“Of all the creatures that were made he [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one — the solitary one — that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices — the most hateful…He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain…Also — in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.”

Mark Twain

Vol. II, p. 7
Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

Pain , Hate , Sport , Passion

“The glory which is built upon a lie soon becomes a most unpleasant incumbrance. ... How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiographical dictation, 2 December 1906. Published in Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 (University of California Press, 2013)

People , Lie

“Don't believe the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

Mark Twain

Misattributed
Source: Often attributed to Twain, but sourced to Robert J. Burdette, Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/06/world-owes/

World

“The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey.”

Mark Twain

Autobiographical Dictation (1906)

God , Disappointment

“In God We Trust.”

Mark Twain

It is the choicest compliment that has ever been paid us, and the most gratifying to our feelings. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased: it always sounds well — In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true. And in a measure it is true — half the nation trusts in Him. That half has decided it.
Source: Mark Twain's Notebook (1935), p. 394

God