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
confidence knowing sap
There is nothing that saps one's confidence as the knowing how to do a thing
optimism optimist
Some of us cannot be optimists, but all of us can be bigamists
honesty men economist
I am not an economist. I am an honest man!
men may habit
A man may have no bad habits and have worse
pessimistic pessimist optimist
Pessimist: The optimist who didn't arrive.
witty humorous stories
The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling;the comic and the witty story upon the matter.
summer shining sun
Warm summer sun, shine kindly here.
men demand double-standard
The timid man yearns for full value and demands a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.
real ideas essentials
What is the real function, the essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome forms?
taken believe thinking
Between believing a thing and thinking you KNOW is only a small step and quickly taken.
land names california
I will remark in the way of general information, that in California, that land of felicitous nomenclature, the literary name of this sort of stuff is "hogwash"
time smoking cigar
More than one cigar at a time is excessive smoking.
men soldier he-man
I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.
work years i-can
I can't do no literary work for the rest of this year because I'm meditating another lawsuit and looking around for a defendant.