257 quotes
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
Following the Equator (1897)
An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth—a fact that is recognized by the law of libel.
Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane—but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it is evidence that you are a lunatic.
I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.
The Innocents Abroad (1869)
This poor little one-horse town.
"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot"
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
No California gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the east. Only the scum of the population do it; they and their children. They, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America.
Roughing It (1872)
One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.
New England Weather, speech to the New England Society (1876)
He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person.
The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.
Quick and Fun Activities for Every Day of the Year (2001)
It may be called the Master Passion—the hunger for Self-Approval.
What Is Man? (1906)
When you want to get revenge on a woman you don't kill her—bosh! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils—you notch her ears like a sow!
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. By forever, I mean thirty years.
Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)
A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.
The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.
Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are.