Mark Twain: Trending quotes (page 6)

“I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 475

People , Books , Time , Reading

“Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

Mark Twain

Quoting or paraphrasing a Professor Winchester in "Disappearance of Literature" http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=TwaSpee.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=52&division=div1, speech at the Nineteenth Century Club, New York, 20 November 1900, in Mark Twain's Speeches (1910), ed. William Dean Howells, p. 194 http://books.google.com/books?id=7etXZ5Q17ngC&pg=PA194
Variant: A classic – something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Reading

“Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is, I dunno. If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.”

Mark Twain

Was the World Made for Man? (1903): also p. 106, What is man?: and other philosophical writings, Volume 19 of Works, 1993, Mark Twain, Paul Baender, University of California Press

Age , World , Painting

“There isn't anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can't believe it.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 136

“Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all — the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.”

Mark Twain

Memorandum written on his deathbed
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)

Love , Death , Peace

“She makes me get up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to let any air git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a cellar-door for — well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and sweat and sweat — I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell — everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 35

Hate , Shoe , Sleep , Time

“It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

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

“Try as you may, you don't get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire. You make a spectacle of yourself every time.”

Mark Twain

"Taming the Bicycle" (1917)

Time , Horse , Housing

“It [the press] has scoffed at religion till it has made scoffing popular. It has defended official criminals, on party pretexts, until it has created a United States Senate whose members are incapable of determining what crime against law and the dignity of their own body is—they are so morally blind—and it has made light of dishonesty till we have as a result a Congress which contracts to work for a certain sum and then deliberately steals additional wages out of the public pocket and is pained and surprised that anybody should worry about a little thing like that.”

Mark Twain

"License of the Press", an address before the Monday Evening Club, Hartford (1873)

Pain , Religion , Law , Light

“There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Ch. 18

Time , Summer

“To put it in rude, plain, unpalatable words — true patriotism, real patriotism: loyalty not to a Family and a Fiction, but a loyalty to the Nation itself!
…"Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it."”

Mark Twain

Czar Nicholas II
1905
Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, 1891-1910 (1992) ed. Louis J. Budd

Family , Time , Heart , Loyalty

“[William Dean] Howells applauded, and was full of praises and endorsement, which was wise in him and judicious. If he had manifested a different spirit I would have thrown him out of the window. I like criticism, but it must be my way.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 441

Way

“Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight.”

Mark Twain

"Man's Place in the Animal World" (1869)

Love , Religion , Animals

“You cannot lay bare your private soul and look at it. You are too much ashamed of yourself. It is too disgusting. For that reason I confine myself to drawing the portraits of others.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 16

Soul , Drawing

“The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples — that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.”

Mark Twain

"My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It" http://www.mtwain.com/My_First_Lie,_And_How_I_Got_Out_Of_It/0.html, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900)

People , Lie , Support , Affliction

“To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.”

Mark Twain

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (30 May 1902); also in Mark Twain : A Life, p. 611

Idea

“Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, & over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite — but they all worship money.”

Mark Twain

Source: Mark Twain's Notebook (1935), p. 343

Men , Money , God

“…. it is not wise to keep the fire going under a slander unless you can get some large advantage out of keeping it alive. Few slanders can stand the wear of silence.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 161