Mark Twain

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.

Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon.

It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during school term.

I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.

I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearing to be good.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: A disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke, and tell indelicate stories— and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures.

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.

Never knew before what eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German.

The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.

I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.

I saw a startling sight today, a politician with his hands in his own pockets.

New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.

Our Congresses consist of Christians. In their private life they are true to every obligation of honor; yet in every session they violate them all, and do it without shame. Because honor to party is above honor to themselves.

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.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.

But that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow.

My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.