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Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 - 1910) was an American humorist with the pseudonym of "Mark Twain," born at Florida, Missouri, U.S.. He began his literary career as a newspaper reporter and a lecturer. His first book was "The Jumping Frog". He visited Europe, described in the "Innocents Abroad". Twain married a lady of fortune. He wrote largely in his peculiar humorous vein, such as the "Tramp Abroad" and produced a drama entitled the "Gilded Age," and compiled the "Memoirs of General Grant".

Wisdom & Quotes

  • As to the Adjective: When in doubt, strike it out.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been still more wonderful to miss it.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • 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.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • Put all your eggs in one basket - and watch that basket.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • The holy passion of friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring in nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
  • Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, in Following the Equator
  • A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.
- letter to Annie Webster, September 1, 1876
  • We have ground the manhood out of them, and the shame is ours not theirs, and we should pay for it.
- letter to Francis Wayland, Dean of the Yale Law School, offering to pay the tuition and board of a black student
  • A coin, sleeve button, or a collar button dropped in a bedroom will hide itself and be hard to find. A handkerchief in bed can't be found.
- Notebooks
  • Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.
- Notebooks
  • There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.
- Notebooks
  • Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
- Notebooks
  • When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
- Notebooks
  • Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.
- Notebooks
  • We write frankly and freely but then we 'modify' before we print.
- Life on the Mississippi
  • All the modern inconveniences.
- Life on the Mississippi
  • The report of my death was an exaggeration.
- cable from London to the Associated Press, 1897
  • Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
- quoted in Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea
  • All kings are mostly rapscallions.
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  • Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
- attributed, inscribed beneath his bust in the Hall of Fame
  • Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
- speech, Greenpoint Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, NY, 1901
  • Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
- The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation in Sketches New and Old
  • All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
- letter to Mrs Foote, December 2, 1887
  • Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
- attributed
  • A thoroughly beautiful woman and a thoroughly homely woman are creations which I love to gaze upon, and which I cannot tire of gazing upon, for each is perfect in her own line.
- Autobiography
  • The difference between the almost right word and the right word is rarely a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
- The Art of Authorship

Samuel Butler the novelist


Page last modified on Saturday June 4, 2022 12:28:30 GMT-0000