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
complaint complaints-and-complaining compliment courteous gentle ought precede resentment
I think a compliment ought to always precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.
men play gentleman
A gentleman is a man who can play the banjo, but doesn't.
heart charity gentleness
Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.
people gentleman alive
My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian-an early Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine. Your people made it tropical for them. . . . The first slave brought into New England out of Africa was an ancestor of mine-for I am a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.
hinduism gentle inconvenient
It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient.
truth real gentleman
No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.
music play gentleman
A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't.
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.