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
afflict amusing array arrest ashamed bunch cash civilization corner government high holy hottest introduce islands lamp life loose moral novelty poor primitive simple sleepy splendor turn wise
We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose -- some for cash and some for ''political influence.'' We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. ''Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?''
animal humanity poor
Human beings seem to be a poor invention. If they are the noblest works of God where is the ignoblest?
character poor fine
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.
problem poor offspring
Additional problems are the offspring of poor solutions.
cease easiest ought smoking thousand
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did, I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.
desire dig hidden life raging rightly somewhere time treasure
There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life that he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure
caught crucified
There has been only one Christian. They caught and crucified him early.
birth grieve involved rejoice
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved
barely good whiskey
Too much of anything is bad, but too much of good whiskey is barely enough.
belief believing schoolboy
Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so
age age-and-aging dark insanity knew misfortune
(Twain on Cain): it was his misfortune to live in a dark age that knew not the beneficent Insanity Plea
divide full joy love scholars-and-scholarship value
To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.
history looks older together twice
Varanasi" is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together
biography buttons cannot clothes himself man written
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of a man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written