Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
— Mark Twain
I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.
A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.
My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.
In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.
Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.
It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.
In 'Huckleberry Finn,' I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had.
Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.
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.
What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
When red-haired people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.
All right, then, I'll go to hell.
Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
I never let schooling interfere with my education.
Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.
Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.
It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us - dreamers and indolent... It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich - these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.
She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.
As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.
Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.
I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
All emotion is involuntary when genuine.
The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.
Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.
