Mark Twain - Quodid

About

Picture of Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He has been praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature". Twain's novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel". He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) and cowrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Quotes from Mark Twain

I am quite sure . . . I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices, nor caste prejudices, nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All I care to know is that a man is a human being — that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

humanity prejudice race irony

It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

pessimism youth

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

intelligence imbeciles

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.

Never learn to do anything: if you don't learn, you'll always find someone else to do it for you.

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.

children familiarity

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself. . . . Anybody can have ideas — the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

words writing ideas achievement

We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.

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