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Mark Twain Quotes - Page 77

All Quotes 4th Of July Accomplishment Achievement Addiction Adventure Adversity Age Aging Alcohol Ambition Anxiety Appearance Appreciation Arguing Army Arrogance Art Atheism Atheist Attitude Authority Balance Beauty Beer Being Alone Belief Bible Bitterness Blame Bliss Bravery Business Censorship Challenges Change Character Charity Chastity Children Christianity Church Coffee College Comedy Communication Community Compassion Confidence Conflict Conscience Conservatism Constitution Cooking Country Courage Crime Criticism Dance Dancing Darkness Death Deception Defeat Democracy Design Desire Determination Devil Disappointment Diversity Divorce Doubt Drinking Duty Dying Earth Education Effort Encouragement Energy Enthusiasm Envy Epic Ethics Evidence Evil Exercise Experience Failing Failure Family Fashion Fear Feelings Fighting Finding Yourself Fitness Flattery Focus Food Forgiveness Free Speech Freedom Friends Friendship Fun Funeral Funny Future Genius Getting Older Giving Giving Up God Gold Good Times Gossip Grace Graduation Gratitude Greatness Greed Grief Grieving Growing Up Growth Happiness Happy Hard Times Hard Work Hate Healing Health Heart Heaven Hell Hilarious Hills Hinduism History Holiday Home Honesty Honor House Human Nature Humanity Humility Hunger Hunting Hurt Hypocrisy Ignorance Imagination Independence Individuality Innovation Insanity Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Integrity Intelligence Journey Joy Judgement Judging Judgment Justice Kindness Knowledge Labor Language Laughter Law Of Attraction Leadership Learning Liars Liberty Life Life And Death Literature Loneliness Losing Loss Love Loyalty Luck Lying Madness Manners Marriage Math Memorial Day Memories Military Moderation Modesty Mom Monarchy Money Moon Morality Morning Motivation Motivational Mountain Music Nature New Year Office Opportunity Optimism Pain Parenting Passion Past Patriotism Peace Perception Perfection Perseverance Personality Philosophy Planning Pleasure Politics Positive Positive Thinking Positivity Poverty Power Praise Prayer Preaching Prejudice Pride Privacy Profanity Progress Prophecy Prosperity Purpose Quality Rain Reading Reading Books Reality Recovery Regret Religion Reputation Respect Responsibility Revolution Risk Running Sad Sadness Sailing Salvation Sanity Sarcasm Satan School Science Self Esteem Seven Shame Silence Simplicity Sin Skins Sleep Smoking Society Solitude Son Sorrow Soul Sports Spring Strength Struggle Study Stupidity Style Success Suffering Summer Sunday Sunshine Swimming Talent Taxes Teaching Temperance Temptation Time Today Trade Tradition Tragedy Training Travel Trust Truth Twins Undertaker Vacation Values Violence Virtue Vision Vocation Voting Waiting War Water Wealth Whiskey Wife Wine Winning Winter Wisdom Wit Work Worry Worship Writing Youth
I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

Mark Twain
Funny, Christian, Religious

Perfect grammar - persistent, continuous, sustained - is the fourth dimension, so to speak; many have sought it, but none has found it.

Mark Twain
Perfect, Dimensions, Speak
Mark Twain (2010). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.120, Univ of California Press

Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle headedness - and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all, that is what I was at nineteen and twenty.

Mark Twain
Ignorance, Self, Perception
Mark Twain (1929). “Mark Twain's Letters”, p.156, Jazzybee Verlag

Everybody lies...every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception.

Mark Twain
Dream, Attitude, Lying
Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2131, GENERAL PRESS

A new oath holds pretty well; but... when it is become old, and frayed out, and damaged by a dozen annual retryings of its remains, it ceases to be serviceable; any little strain will snap it.

Mark Twain
New Year, Holiday, Dozen

Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait and count to forty. To save three quarters, count sixty. To save all, count sixty-five.

Mark Twain
Simple, Waiting, Three
Mark Twain, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (2009). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.286, Courier Corporation

Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.

Mark Twain
Children, Two, Compliment
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain's Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence, 1905-1910”, p.16, University of Georgia Press

Look at the mother of Washington! She raised a boy that could not tell a lie--could not tell a lie! But he never had any chance. It might have been different if he had belonged to the Washington Newspaper Correspondents' Club

Mark Twain
Mother, Truth, Lying
Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.1026, Jazzybee Verlag

If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loudly. Do not compound mispronunciation with inaudibility

Mark Twain
Compounds, Knows, Ifs

The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness--your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture....He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher.

Mark Twain
Kindness, Humorous, Love You

I am technically "boss" of the family which I am carrying along-but I am grateful to know that it is only technically - that the real authority rests on the other side of the house. It is placed there by a beneficent Providence, who foresaw before I was born, or, if he did not, he has found it out since - that I am not in any way qualified to travel alone.

Mark Twain
Travel, Real, Grateful
Mark Twain (2006). “Mark Twain Speaking”, p.300, University of Iowa Press

It was on the 10th day of May - 1884 - that I confessed to age by mounting spectacles for the first time, and in the same hour I renewed my youth, to outward appearance, by mounting a bicycle for the first time. The spectacles stayed on.

Mark Twain
Age, May, Firsts

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist's custom.

Mark Twain
Travel, Society, Tourism
Mark Twain (1976). “Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, Volume II: (1877-1883)”, p.318, Univ of California Press

There are women who have an indefinable charm in their faces which makes them beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty would fail.

Mark Twain
Beautiful, Matter, Faces
Mark Twain (2015). “A Tramp Abroad: Mark Twain's Collections”, p.214, 谷月社

When one's character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.

Mark Twain
Fall, Character, Atheism
Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.460, Courier Corporation

Written things are not for speech; their form is literary; they are stiff, inflexible, and will not lend themselves to happy and effective delivery with the tongue-where their purpose is to merely entertain, not instruct; they have to be limbered up, broken up, colloquialized and turned into common forms of premeditated talk-otherwise they will bore the house and not entertain it.

Mark Twain
Broken, House, Purpose
Mark Twain (2015). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.166, Univ of California Press

Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual harmonious development, its culminating graces-and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train.

Mark Twain
Nature, Grace, Passing Away
Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.4864, Delphi Classics

The xmas holidays have this high value: that they remind Forgetters of the Forgotten, & repair damaged relationships.

Mark Twain
Xmas, Holiday, Forgotten
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain's Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence, 1905-1910”, p.89, University of Georgia Press

Apparently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the funeral of a religion.

Mark Twain
Funeral, Religion, World
Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.401, Courier Corporation

Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them.

Mark Twain
Lying, Way, Firsts

Probably there is an imperceptible touch of something permanent that one feels instinctively to adhere to true humour, whereas wit may be the mere conversational shooting up of "smartness"--a bright feather, to be blown into space the second after it is launched...Wit seems to be counted a very poor relation to Humour....Humour is never artificial.

Mark Twain
Humor, Space, Shooting Up

Humor, to be comprehensible to anybody, must be built upon a foundation with which he is familiar. If he can't see the foundation the superstructure is to him merely a freak -- like the Flatiron building without any visible means of support -- something that ought to be arrested.

Mark Twain
Humor, Mean, Support
Mark Twain, Gary Scharnhorst (2006). “Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews”, p.519, University of Alabama Press

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.

Mark Twain
Use, Periods, Term
Mark Twain, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (2009). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.403, Courier Corporation

If I were going to construct a God I would furnish him with some ways and qualities and characteristics which the Present One lacks... He would spend some of His eternities in trying to forgive Himself for making man unhappy when He could have made him happy with the same effort and He would spend the rest of them in studying astronomy.

Mark Twain
Men, Effort, Forgiving

A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results.

Mark Twain
Writing, Men, Ideas
Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2943, GENERAL PRESS

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