Mark Twain

Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyerand its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the latter often called "The Great American Novel"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 November 1835
CountryUnited States of America
summer successful vacation
The most successful people are those who do all year long what they would otherwise do on their summer vacation.
capture form simplest
If I can capture truth in its simplest form, beauty will follow like a sledgehammer.
book classic praise
A "classic" is a book that everybody praises but nobody has read
bigotry
Travel is fatal to bigotry.
beauty beautiful sight
We can't always have the beautiful aspect of things. Let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others go
boys towns small-town
In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy, everybody was poor, but didn't know it; and everybody was comfortable and did know it.
horse women ambition
Every man has a secret ambition: To outsmart horses, fish and women.
opportunity thinking effort
I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out of all proportion to the European experience.
men museums machines
Man seems to be a rickety poor sort of thing, any way you take him; a kind of British Museum of infirmities and inferiorities. He is always undergoing repairs. A machine that was as unreliable as he is would have no market.
wisdom may unexamined-life
The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.
beautiful wisdom true-wisdom
If true, rarely beautiful. If beautiful, rarely true.
school firsts half
The first half of my life I went to school, the second half of my life I got an education.
mother matter becoming
If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won't. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterwards act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your better judgment.
rome thrill charm
What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me? What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others? What can I discover?--Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here.