1835-1910, American Humorist, Writer
We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks, if we agree with him.
Mark Twain – [Thoughts and Thinking]


We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose — some for cash and some for ''political influence.'' We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. ''Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?''
Mark Twain – [Empire]


We need not worry so much about what man descends from; it's what he descends to that shames the human race.
Mark Twain – [Success]


We never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead — and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.
Mark Twain – [Death and Dying]


We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Adam, the first great benefactor of the human race: he brought death into the world.
Mark Twain – [Death and Dying]


We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it — and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again — and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Mark Twain – [Experience]


What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before.
Mark Twain – [Plagiarism]


What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one's self-approval.
Mark Twain – [Self-approval]


What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows — it must grow; nothing can prevent it.
Mark Twain – [Growth]


What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea, to discover a great thought — an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plough had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the lightning carry your messages. To be the first — that is the idea.
Mark Twain – [Discovery]


What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.
Mark Twain – [Consistency]


When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
Mark Twain – [Deception]


When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
Mark Twain – [Anger]


When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
Mark Twain – [Ignorance]


When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.
Mark Twain – [Memory]


When one has tasted it [Watermelon] he knows what the angels eat.
Mark Twain – [Food and Eating]


When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.
Mark Twain – [Respectability]


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 – [Politicians and Politics]


When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain – [Insanity]


When you ascend the hill of prosperity, may you not meet a friend.
Mark Twain – [Prosperity]

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