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
change progress favors
I'm in favor of progress; it's change I don't like.
favors flattery compliment
Do not offer a compliment and ask a favor at the same time. A compliment that is charged for is not valuable.
animal men favors
It now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one...the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
animal men favors
I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so-called,) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
boy building closed education farmer jail public river save schools spoke stopped time
When I was a boy on the Mississippi River there was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped building the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built.
astonished boy father hardly ignorant learned man seven stand
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years.
age-and-aging bed begin brains business forty main permanent regular since until
We have no permanent brains until we are forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up -- and that is one of the main things.
boys children half nine
We have nine children now half boys and half girls.
side time whenever
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
atlantic emerges german last literary side until verb whenever
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
knowing loudest
The person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.
intended nobody offers pay somebody three until within wood writers-and-writing
Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.
funny compassion feelings
All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.
new-york men mark
Make your mark in New York and you are a made man.