Quotes from Mark Twain

About two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a pen of scantlings, about four feet high, and laid planks on it, and so made a platform. We covered it with swell tapestries borrowed for the occasion, and topped it off with the abbot's own throne. When you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want to get in every detail that will count;

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for I'd noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth if I left it alone.

Your mother couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. None of the family couldn't before they died. I can't; and here you're a-swelling yourself up like this.

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.

Never let school interfere with your education

The world is beautiful and dangerous, and joyful and sad, and ungrateful and giving, and full of so, so many things. The world is new and it is old. It is big and it is small. The world is fierce and it is kind, and we, every one of us, are in it.

We did not oversleep at St. Nicholas. The church-bell began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from the length of time it continued to ring I judged that it takes the Swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation through his head.

Love your enemy, it will scare the hell out of them.

If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.

The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils, but give me the banjo.