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Mark Twain Quotes - Page 81

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If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go

If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me Napoleonic in its grandeur.

Mark Twain
War, Home, Fighting
Mark Twain (1994). “Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches”, p.146, Penguin

I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.

Mark Twain
Funny, Years, Ass
Mark Twain (2004). “The Portable Mark Twain”, p.572, Penguin

Well - Patriotism has its laws. And it also is a perfectly definite one, there are not vaguenesses about it. It commands that the brother over the border shall be sharply watched and brought to book every time he does us a hurt or offends us with an insult.

Mark Twain
Hurt, Brother, Book
Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.44, Courier Corporation

I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way.

Mark Twain
Respect, Inspiration, Men

As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.

Mark Twain
Respect, Book, Character
Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.3759, GENERAL PRESS

We may not doubt that society in heaven consists mainly of undesirable persons.

Mark Twain
Heaven, Doubt, May
Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.449, Courier Corporation

It's my opinion that every one I know has morals, though I wouldn't like to ask. I know I have. But I'd rather teach them than practice them any day. "Give them to others"-that's my motto.

Mark Twain
Practice, Giving, Opinion
Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.7299, Delphi Classics

We get our morals from books. I didn't get mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books- theoretically at least.

Mark Twain
Book, Moral, Mines
Mark Twain (2017). “The Complete Novels of Mark Twain (Illustrated): 12 American Classics & Author’s Biography: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, A Horse’s Tale, The Prince and the Pauper, The American Claimant, The Mysterious Stranger…”, p.4164, e-artnow

As by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime you learn real morals. Commit all crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take them in rotation (there are only two or three thousand of them), stick to it, commit two or three every day, and by and by you will be proof against them. When you are through you will be proof against all sins and morally perfect. You will be vaccinated against every possible commission of them. This is the only way.

Mark Twain
Real, Fire, Two
Mark Twain (2017). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated Edition): Novels, Short Stories, Memoir, Travel Books, Letters, Biography, Articles & Speeches: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, Yankee in King Arthur's Court…”, p.8498, e-artnow

...mastery of the art and spirit of the Germanic language enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.

Mark Twain
Art, Men, Car
Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.149, Courier Corporation

It is easier for a cannibal to enter the Kingdom of Heaven through the eye of a rich man's needle that it is for any other foreigner to read the terrible German script.

Mark Twain
Eye, Men, Heaven
Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.149, Courier Corporation

...the circumstances and the atmosphere always have so much to do in directing a conversation, especially a German conversation, which is only a kind of an insurrection, anyway.

Mark Twain
Atmosphere, Language, Kind
Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.68, Courier Corporation

It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them flapping around in your head same as so much drawn butter.

Mark Twain
Running, German Language, Brain
Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.142, Courier Corporation

I would not rob you of your food or your clothes or your umbrella, but if I caught your German out I would take it. But I don't study any more,- I have given it up.

Mark Twain
Clothes, Study, Language
Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.143, Courier Corporation

I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter.

Mark Twain
Language, Wells, Maniacs
Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.3252, GENERAL PRESS

It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business.

Mark Twain
Hurt, Spring, Fall
Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.3129, GENERAL PRESS

I don't speak German well but several experts have assured me that I write it like an angel. Maybe so, maybe so- I don't know. I've not yet made any acquaintances among the angels. That comes later, whenever it please the Deity. I'm not in any hurry.

Mark Twain
Writing, Angel, Experts

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.

Mark Twain
School, Sunday, Pirate
Mark Twain, Michael Barry Frank, Robert Pack Browning, Lin Salamo, Frederick Anderson, Mark Twain (1980). “Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, Volume III: (1883-1891)”, p.399, Univ of California Press

I have learned that there lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant for some particular musical instrument an an unsuspected yearning to play on it, which are bound to wake up an demand attention someday. Therefore you who rail at such that disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a guitar, beware! For sooner or later your own time will come.

Mark Twain
Music, Lying, Men

I'm merely running some errands. This is now off the record.

Mark Twain
Running, Records, Errands

I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.

Mark Twain
Discovery, Talking, People
Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.2924, Delphi Classics

The frankest and freest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter; the writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing.

Mark Twain
Love, Writing, Heart
Mark Twain (2010). “Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review”, p.23, Univ of Wisconsin Press

The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously.

Mark Twain
Past, Race, Interesting
Mark Twain (2016). “Mark Twain in Eruption (Abridged, Annotated)”, p.48, BIG BYTE BOOKS

I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart, she has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a wet-nurse, she has no equal among men. What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

Mark Twain
Cousin, Grandmother, Men
Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.1026, Jazzybee Verlag

In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. . . . There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; . . . she was doing in all this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery.

Mark Twain
Children, Religion, Age

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