Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. -- Mark Twain | |
A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature" | |
A hundred years from now it is very likely that [of Twain's works] "The Jumping Frog" alone will be remembered. -- Harry Thurston Peck (Editor of "The Bookman"), January 1901. | |
... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity. -- Mark Twain | |
All generalizations are false, including this one. -- Mark Twain | |
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
"... all the modern inconveniences ..." -- Mark Twain | |
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. -- Mark Twain | |
"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often picturesque liar." -- Mark Twain | |
Anyone who has had a bull by the tail knows five or six more things than someone who hasn't. -- Mark Twain | |
April 1 This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint. -- Mark Twain | |
Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"--which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention;" but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and--WATCH THAT BASKET." -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean. -- Mark Twain | |
Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities. -- Mark Twain | |
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain | |
Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and put him at the head of the procession. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. -- Mark Twain | |
Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say that she did it with her teeth. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion. -- Mark Twain | |
Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children. -- Mark Twain | |
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. -- "Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with. -- Mark Twain | |
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar | |
Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town? -- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn" | |
Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom. -- Mark Twain | |
He is now rising from affluence to poverty. -- Mark Twain | |
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. -- Mark Twain | |
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up. -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad" | |
I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. -- Mark Twain | |
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. -- Mark Twain | |
If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end. -- Mark Twain | |
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. -- Mark Twain | |
In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man." -- Mark Twain | |
In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. -- Mark Twain | |
In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel. -- Mark Twain | |
In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made school boards. -- Mark Twain | |
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. -- Mark Twain | |
In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours. -- Mark Twain, on New England weather | |
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either. -- Mark Twain | |
It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. -- Mark Twain | |
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God. -- Mark Twain | |
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read. -- Mark Twain | |
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to. -- Mark Twain | |
No group of professionals meets except to conspire against the public at large. -- Mark Twain | |
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid. -- Mark Twain | |
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. -- Mark Twain | |
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
October 12, the Discovery. It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author -- Mark Twain, "Tom Sawyer" | |
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain | |
Remark of Dr. Baldwin's concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late. -- Mark Twain | |
She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot. -- Mark Twain | |
Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. -- Mark Twain | |
Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal. -- Mark Twain | |
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. -- Mark Twain | |
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. -- Mark Twain | |
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner. -- Mark Twain | |
The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful. -- Mark Twain | |
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not. -- Mark Twain | |
The Public is merely a multiplied "me." -- Mark Twain | |
The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven. -- Mark Twain | |
The surest protection against temptation is cowardice. -- Mark Twain | |
The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of the world's luxuries, king by the grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because she repented. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. -- Mark Twain | |
There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
There is an old time toast which is golden for its beauty. "When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend." -- Mark Twain | |
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. -- Mark Twain | |
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce. -- Mark Twain | |
Too much is just enough. -- Mark Twain, on whiskey | |
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it. -- Mark Twain | |
Wagner's music is better than it sounds. -- Mark Twain | |
Water, taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain | |
We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more. -- Mark Twain | |
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it. -- Mark Twain | |
When in doubt, tell the truth. -- Mark Twain | |
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. -- Mark Twain "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" | |
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. -- Mark Twain | |
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. -- Mark Twain | |
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. -- Mark Twain | |
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. - Mark Twain | |
"Everybody is talking about the weather but nobody does anything about it." -- Mark Twain | |
"There is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress." -- Mark Twain | |
"Buy land. They've stopped making it." -- Mark Twain | |
"I never let my schooling get in the way of my education." -- Mark Twain | |
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." -- Mark Twain | |
All kings is mostly rapscallions. --Mark Twain | |
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling by Mark Twain For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. | |
But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery -- go! -- Mark "The Bard" Twain | |
The Worst American Poet Julia Moore, "the Sweet Singer of Michigan" (1847-1920) was so bad that Mark Twain said her first book gave him joy for 20 years. Her verse was mainly concerned with violent death -- the great fire of Chicago and the yellow fever epidemic proved natural subjects for her pen. Whether death was by drowning, by fits or by runaway sleigh, the formula was the same: Have you heard of the dreadful fate Of Mr. P.P. Bliss and wife? Of their death I will relate, And also others lost their life (in the) Ashbula Bridge disaster, Where so many people died. Even if you started out reasonably healthy in one of Julia's poems, the chances are that after a few stanzas you would be at the bottom of a river or struck by lightning. A critic of the day said she was "worse than a Gatling gun" and in one slim volume counted 21 killed and 9 wounded. Incredibly, some newspapers were critical of her work, even suggesting that the sweet singer was "semi-literate". Her reply was forthright: "The Editors that has spoken in this scandalous manner have went beyond reason." She added that "literary work is very difficult to do". -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we". -- Mark Twain | |
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they escaped teething. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" |