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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"
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
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