Top 25 Quotes by Mark Twain of 2407 - Page 77

I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

Mark Twain

Funny, Christian, Religious

Perfect grammar - persistent, continuous, sustained - is the fourth dimension, so to speak; many have sought it, but none has found it.

Mark Twain

Perfect, Dimensions, Speak

Mark Twain (2010). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.120, Univ of California Press

Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle headedness - and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all, that is what I was at nineteen and twenty.

Mark Twain

Ignorance, Self, Perception

Mark Twain (1929). “Mark Twain's Letters”, p.156, Jazzybee Verlag

Everybody lies...every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception.

Mark Twain

Dream, Attitude, Lying

Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2131, GENERAL PRESS

A new oath holds pretty well; but... when it is become old, and frayed out, and damaged by a dozen annual retryings of its remains, it ceases to be serviceable; any little strain will snap it.

Mark Twain

New Year, Holiday, Dozen

Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait and count to forty. To save three quarters, count sixty. To save all, count sixty-five.

Mark Twain

Simple, Waiting, Three

Mark Twain, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (2009). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.286, Courier Corporation

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

Children, Two, Compliment

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain's Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence, 1905-1910”, p.16, University of Georgia Press

Look at the mother of Washington! She raised a boy that could not tell a lie--could not tell a lie! But he never had any chance. It might have been different if he had belonged to the Washington Newspaper Correspondents' Club

Mark Twain

Mother, Truth, Lying

Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.1026, Jazzybee Verlag

If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loudly. Do not compound mispronunciation with inaudibility

Mark Twain

Compounds, Knows, Ifs

The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness--your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture....He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher.

Mark Twain

Kindness, Humorous, Love You

I am technically "boss" of the family which I am carrying along-but I am grateful to know that it is only technically - that the real authority rests on the other side of the house. It is placed there by a beneficent Providence, who foresaw before I was born, or, if he did not, he has found it out since - that I am not in any way qualified to travel alone.

Mark Twain

Travel, Real, Grateful

Mark Twain (2006). “Mark Twain Speaking”, p.300, University of Iowa Press

It was on the 10th day of May - 1884 - that I confessed to age by mounting spectacles for the first time, and in the same hour I renewed my youth, to outward appearance, by mounting a bicycle for the first time. The spectacles stayed on.

Mark Twain

Age, May, Firsts

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist's custom.

Mark Twain

Travel, Society, Tourism

Mark Twain (1976). “Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, Volume II: (1877-1883)”, p.318, Univ of California Press

There are women who have an indefinable charm in their faces which makes them beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty would fail.

Mark Twain

Beautiful, Matter, Faces

Mark Twain (2015). “A Tramp Abroad: Mark Twain's Collections”, p.214, 谷月社

When one's character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.

Mark Twain

Fall, Character, Atheism

Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.460, Courier Corporation

Written things are not for speech; their form is literary; they are stiff, inflexible, and will not lend themselves to happy and effective delivery with the tongue-where their purpose is to merely entertain, not instruct; they have to be limbered up, broken up, colloquialized and turned into common forms of premeditated talk-otherwise they will bore the house and not entertain it.

Mark Twain

Broken, House, Purpose

Mark Twain (2015). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.166, Univ of California Press

Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual harmonious development, its culminating graces-and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train.

Mark Twain

Nature, Grace, Passing Away

Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.4864, Delphi Classics

The xmas holidays have this high value: that they remind Forgetters of the Forgotten, & repair damaged relationships.

Mark Twain

Xmas, Holiday, Forgotten

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain's Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence, 1905-1910”, p.89, University of Georgia Press

Apparently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the funeral of a religion.

Mark Twain

Funeral, Religion, World

Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.401, Courier Corporation

Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them.

Mark Twain

Lying, Way, Firsts

Probably there is an imperceptible touch of something permanent that one feels instinctively to adhere to true humour, whereas wit may be the mere conversational shooting up of "smartness"--a bright feather, to be blown into space the second after it is launched...Wit seems to be counted a very poor relation to Humour....Humour is never artificial.

Mark Twain

Humor, Space, Shooting Up

Humor, to be comprehensible to anybody, must be built upon a foundation with which he is familiar. If he can't see the foundation the superstructure is to him merely a freak -- like the Flatiron building without any visible means of support -- something that ought to be arrested.

Mark Twain

Humor, Mean, Support

Mark Twain, Gary Scharnhorst (2006). “Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews”, p.519, University of Alabama Press

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.

Mark Twain

Use, Periods, Term

Mark Twain, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (2009). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.403, Courier Corporation

If I were going to construct a God I would furnish him with some ways and qualities and characteristics which the Present One lacks... He would spend some of His eternities in trying to forgive Himself for making man unhappy when He could have made him happy with the same effort and He would spend the rest of them in studying astronomy.

Mark Twain

Men, Effort, Forgiving

A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results.

Mark Twain

Writing, Men, Ideas

Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2943, GENERAL PRESS