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
humor space shooting-up
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.
humor cat laughing
I pity the fellow who has to create a dialect or paraphrase the dictionary to get laughs. I can't spell, but I have never stooped to spell cat with a 'k' to get at your funny bone. I love a drink, but I never encouraged drunkenness by harping on its alleged funny side.
humor thinking years
So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant.
humorous animal plant
Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are God's jokes.
kindness love-you humorous
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.
humor fragrance decoration
Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.
humor forbidden-things forbidden
The funniest things are the forbidden.
history sometimes rhyme
History never repeats itself; at best it sometimes rhymes.
hilarious men more-money
Men are like bank accounts. The more money, the more interest they generate.
happiness contrast pleasant
Happiness ain't a thing in itself - it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant.
happiness men busy
To be busy is man's only happiness.
happiness impossible sanity
Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination?
god romance sacred
God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New--the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance.
god good-god
None of us can be as great as God, but any of us can be as good.