257 quotes
He says every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind if you want to see it.
The Refuge of the Derelicts (1905)
Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
...[H]eaven for climate, Hell for society.
Speech to the Acorn Society (1901)
Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.
Address to the New York General Assembly (1901)
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's Notebook (1935)
James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration.
France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)
... a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful.
It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.
I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature, but I never saw a policeman interfere in the matter and I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done him.
He was a very inferior farmer when he first begun,… and he is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's Farm: Quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.
Which was the Dream? (1898)
I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
Concerning the Jews (1899)
I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, "All right, then, I'll go to hell."
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
Ah, it was worth ten years of a man’s life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a good neighbourhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to the best families in the city.
Belgium's royal palace is still what it has been for the last 14 years: a lair of a wild beast that for its money every year mutilates, murders and starves a half million helpless natives in the Congo Free State.
Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? [...] Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.
A New Crime (1870)
If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.
How To Tell A Story (1895)
It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger—but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)