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
imagination earth wonder
Now, isn't imagination a precious thing? It peoples the earth with all manner of wonders...
grief sadness men
The dreamer's valuation of a thing lost - not another man's - is the only standard to measure it by, and his grief for it makes it large and great and fine, and is worthy of our reverence in all cases.
men trying noise
You try to tell me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.
marriage men race
God's great cosmic joke on the human race was requiring that men and women live together in marriage
self self-respect compliment
An occasional compliment is necessary to keep up one's self-respect.
heart civilization
Civilizations proceed from the heart rather than from the head.
pride thinking world
I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
san-francisco gone done
I have done more for San Francisco than any of its old residents. Since I left there it has increased in population fully 300,000. I could have done more - I could have gone earlier - it was suggested.
race superstitions conservatism
When the human race has once acquired a superstition, nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.
humorous house rooms
There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.
suicide powerful humorous
I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.
writing humble average
An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop.... I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen.
life struggle taken
A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle; ...they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; ...those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. It comes at last--the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them--and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence, ...a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever.
work intellectual society
Intellectual ''work'' is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.