Mark Twain: Good (page 3)

Mark Twain was American author and humorist. Explore interesting quotes on good.
Mark Twain: 1274   quotes 794   likes

“Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.”

Mark Twain

Letter to Gertrude Natkin, 2 March 1906 http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/53b4cf90-7739-0132-f12c-58d385a7b928

Love

“Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs—the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest—you want them all to land in hell together, and right away.”

Mark Twain

About Margaret Deland's book John Ward, Preacher
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)

Feeling , Failure , Hell , Strong

“I had now—not for the first time, nor the thousandth—trampled upon an old and wise and stern maxim of mine, to wit: "Supposing is good, but finding out is better."”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 99

Time

“These wisdoms are for the luring of youth toward high moral altitudes. The author did not gather them from practice, but from observation. To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

The Pudd'nhead Maxims, preface
Following the Equator (1897)

Wisdom , Youth

“Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it.”

Mark Twain book The American Claimant

The American Claimant, foreword (1892)

Weather

“We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Ch. 12

Feeling , Star , Fish , Weather

“Warm summer sun, shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind, blow softly here;
Green sod above, lie light, lie light —
Good-night, dear heart, good-night, good-night.”

Mark Twain

Epitaph for his daughter, Olivia Susan Clemens (1896), this is actually a slight adaptation of the poem "Annette" by Robert Richardson; more details are available at "The Poem on Susy Clemens' Headstone" http://www.twainquotes.com/headstone.html
Misattributed

Lie , Light , Sun , Heart

“In grandchildren I am the richest man that lives to-day: for I select my grandchildren, whereas all other grandfathers have to take them as they come, good, bad, and indifferent.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 219, of his "angel-fishes"—girls between the ages of ten and sixteen whom he befriended after the death of his wife

Indifference

“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

“When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?”

Mark Twain

"Consistency", paper read at the Hartford Monday Evening Club on 5 December 1887. The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, p. 582 http://books.google.com/books?id=sujuHO_fvJgC&pg=PA582&dq=%22When+the+doctrine+of+allegiance%22 (First published in the 1923 edition of Mark Twain's Speeches, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine, pp. 120-130, where it is incorrectly dated "following the Blaine-Cleveland campaign, 1884." (See Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals (1979), ed. Frederick Anderson, Vol. 3, p. 41, footnote 92 http://books.google.com/books?id=kMbeUm4pJwsC&pg=PA41) Many reprints repeat Paine's dating.)

Truth , Fools , Country

“His grammar is foolishly correct, offensively precise. It flaunts itself in the reader's face all along, and struts and smirks and shows off, and is in a dozen ways irritating and disagreeable. To be serious, I write good grammar myself, but not in that spirit, I am thankful to say. That is to say, my grammar is of a high order, though not at the top. Nobody's is. Perfect grammar—persistent, continuous, sustained—is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 120

Way , Perfection

“From the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick to receive the candle. But man is only briefly competent:…After fifty his performance is of poor quality; the intervals between are wide, and its satisfactions of no great quality to either party; whereas his great-grandmother is as good as new.”

Mark Twain book Letters from the Earth

Letters from the Earth (1909)

Time , Age